David Hone

The first full day of 400+ ppm CO2 as recorded at Mauna Loa in Hawaii last week produced an outpouring of sentiment and grief from many, but the news has seemingly passed. Unfortunately, the arrival of such a day had become inevitable. Since the early days of the Keeling Curve at 315 ppm when it became clearly apparent that anthropogenic CO2 emissions were accumulating in the atmosphere, we have counting up the ppm to this day.

Despite an early clear warning to the Johnson Administration at 321 ppm, it wasn’t long before there was a brief worry about global cooling. Then, with atmospheric chemistry growing as a discipline (probably on the back of concerns about a cold war nuclear winter), we were distracted at 332 ppm by the first major anthropogenic global concern, the hole in the ozone layer. But with a treaty negotiated and ratification underway by 349 ppm (only 17 ppm to sort that one out), it didn’t take long for the science community to remember that another big issue was lurking in the shadows.

At 352 ppm and nearly 40 ppm on from the start of the Keeling Curve, James Hansen stated to a US Congressional Committee that;

• The earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements.
• Global warming is now large enough that we can scribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse affect.
• Computer simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves.

But it was another 13 ppm before the Kyoto Protocol was adopted by parties to the UNFCCC and 14 ppm more before it was finally ratified. 21 ppm later and it is a shadow of its former self, but at least with the legacy of some beginnings of a global carbon market. However, it is trading close to zero!! In the interim there was a valiant attempt at a new global deal, but even that was 12 ppm ago.

Our goal to be avoided, 450 ppm, is now feeling a bit close for comfort, given we are already at 400 ppm and 300 ppm was only passed under the previous British monarch.

Not to worry, it should only be another 15 ppm before a new global deal comes into force, although after more than 3ppm of discussion, the negotiations don’t really seem to have started. So we wait again, hopeful that someone has got a plan.

In recent months there has been a renewed look at the idea of a financial carbon bubble, or unburnable carbon reserves. Most recently, a report from The Carbon Tracker with a forward by Lord Stern of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change (London School of Economics), argued that serious risks are accumulating for investors in high carbon assets, such as coal mining companies and the oil and gas industry.

The idea of the “carbon bubble” is based on a concept that I have discussed many times in this blog: that there is a finite limit to the “atmospheric space” for CO2 while still ensuring that warming does not rise above 2 °C. That limit is about one trillion tonnes of carbon.

The issue of the bubble arises because the combined proven oil, gas and coal reserves currently on the books of fossil fuel companies (and governments in the case of NOCs) will produce far more than this amount of CO2 when consumed. This implies that in a world where the 2 °C limit is imposed and achieved, most of the future value generation of the companies involved will never be realized and therefore investors in them today are looking at a financial bubble that may well burst in front them. According to my analysis and the global reserves data in the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, we get to about 1.6 trillion tonnes of carbon as shown below. This equates to the use of total current fossil energy reserves of about 900 billion tonnes of carbon equivalent (the balance comes from the use of cement and land use change).

 The report clearly sets out the global carbon budget, the reserves outlook, the current capital flow being consumed to expand those reserves and comes to the additional conclusion that this part of the global energy system will also waste trillions in capex over the coming decade as it develops more reserves that could also become unburnable. The report authors argue that even the massive application of carbon capture and storage will do little to help the situation.

There is really nothing to argue about in terms of the CO2 math itself. It is certainly the case that current proven reserves will take us well past 2 °C if completely consumed and the CO2 emitted. But now comes the reality check!

What is missing in the report is any discussion about the dynamics of the global energy system, the need to meet energy demand and of course the rapid growth we are seeing in that demand. To bring all this math into the equation it is probably best to turn to the new Shell Energy Scenarios, released about two months ago. I discussed these at some length a few weeks back.

In the context of this discussion, the initial focus should probably be on the Oceans scenario in that it sees the very rapid introduction of solar energy, with eventual large scale displacement of fossil fuels in the second half of the century. Global energy demand rises from 535 EJ in 2010 to 777 EJ in 2030 and 1056 EJ in 2060. Although solar (mainly PV) is the largest single energy source by that time, total carbon consumed through fossil fuel use amounts to 800 billion tonnes carbon by the end of the century, just a bit less than current proven reserves (900 billion tonnes as indicated above). The large consumption of fossil fuel is required simply to meet energy needs as renewable energy attempts to catch up with overall demand (which it won’t do until sometime in the 22^nd century). This change is purely through the market and social dynamics present in the Oceans scenario, which sees strong growth, improved energy efficiency driven by higher prices and solar eventually dominating. CCS comes in later in the century, removing about 100 billion tonnes of carbon.

By contrast, Mountains is a fossil fuel scenario, but with heavy reliance on CCS from about 2030. Total fossil fuel use is over a trillion tonnes of carbon equivalent, which exceeds current proven reserves. However, CCS removes some 300 billion tonnes of carbon, giving an overall accumulation of 1.25 trillion tonnes by 2100 (current accumulation plus fossil use to 2100 plus land use change and cement). This is still above the trillion tonne limit, but is the overall lower emissions outlook.

The key lesson from the scenarios in this regard is that both a rapid growth in renewable energy and the early use of CCS are required to manage emissions throughout this century. The paradox is that these exist in different scenarios with entirely different underlying economic and social drivers. It’s quite hard to have both – a world that likes fossil fuel readily gives permission to CCS going forward, but doesn’t really see huge segments of the nergy market taken by renewable energy. Nuclear is strong though. Conversely, the distributed energy solar world of Oceans doesn’t want to hear about CCS and therefore leaves it until physical climate pressures (e.g. extreme weather events) force action.

The reality check for the “carbon bubble” proponents is that global energy demands still need to be met and that there are limits to the growth rate of fossil energy substitutes, even as climate goals come under pressure.

The Easter break provided a good opportunity to catch up on some recent climate stories, but the current messages delivered by the various media and other outlets vary enormously with a bewildering array of assertions and counter claims.

The continued arguments about the “pause” or otherwise in global warming continue, most notably in the Mail Online / Mail on Sunday, where columnist David Rose argues that there is “hard proof” that incorrect global warming forecasts are “costing us billions”. But his arguments have a number of problems.

The Mail chose to quote a number of climate scientists, one of whom almost immediately refuted the way in which the article had used his quote. Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford and Head of the Climate Dynamics Group in the University’s Department of Physics is reported to have said;

“. . . . that until recently he believed the world might be on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than five degrees this century. But he now says: ‘The odds have come down,’ – adding that warming is likely to be significantly lower. Prof Allen says higher estimates are now ‘looking iffy’.”

But in an article in The Guardian, Allen made it clear that his point was very different to that expressed;

But I also explained that doubling pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentrations, which we are almost certain to do now, was just the beginning. Increasing use of fossil carbon at the current rate would drive atmospheric concentrations towards four times pre-industrial figures by 2100. So even if the “climate sensitivity” is as low as 2C, as some lines of evidence now suggest, we would still be looking at 4C plus by the early 22nd century.

The Mail article uses a simple surface temperature chart to argue that warming estimates have been a “spectacular miscalculation”, even though the heavy black line shown in the chart (see below) has not actually breached the 95% confidence limits, rather there is just the assertion that it “is about to crash out”.

Further to this, the Mail has not done any real analysis of this trend, such as presented in December 2011 by Foster and Rahmstorf (Global temperature evolution 1979–2010, Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf, Environmental Research Letters 6 (2011) 044022 (8pp)). In their paper they correct for the effect of volcanoes, solar variability and ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) in all the main global temperature data sets and present the chart below – which shows a steady and continuing issue with the global heat balance and a consequent rising temperature trend.

Other studies show similar findings, such as the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Project. The Economist also weighed in and discussed the differences between climate modeling approaches and ventured some thoughts on why these models are giving quite different results at the moment.

One of the issues that the Mail article addressed was the money being spent in the UK on renewable energy and its flow through to electricity and fuel bills. There is no doubt that this is an issue at the moment in the UK, but the reasons for it are multiple and complex. Attempting to create a simple link between the need for offshore wind subsidies and recent temperature trends trivializes both the climate issue and the various discussions around energy security, competitiveness and energy costs.

The renewable energy issue leads onto another story published just before Easter – a posting by Paul Gilding in Australia which made the case that the fossil fuel industry is on the verge of massive disruption, leading to its inevitable extinction in just a few decades.

There are signs the climate movement could be on the verge of a remarkable and surprising victory. If we read the current context correctly, and if the movement can adjust its strategy to capture the opportunity presented, it could usher in the fastest and most dramatic economic transformation in history. This would include the removal of the oil, coal and gas industries from the economy in just a few decades and their replacement with new industries and, for the most part, entirely new companies. It would be the greatest transfer of wealth and power between industries and countries the world has ever seen.

Of course it’s difficult for me to pass credible comment on this, given my affiliation to that industry, but the facts simply don’t stack up. While there is no doubt that renewable energy use is accelerating rapidly, so too is the use of fossil fuels and of course our overall use of energy. Both renewable energy and fossil energy will need to grow, simply to make energy ends meet. In the recently released Shell New Lens Scenarios, the Oceans scenario sees an extraordinary increase in solar energy uptake, which by 2030 is seriously outpacing the recent and current (1990-2020) surge in coal use. But even with this growth rate, it is not until about 2030 that fossil use drops below 80% of primary energy use and not until 2060 that overall fossil use actually starts to decline in absolute terms.

Finally, Bjorn Lomborg resurfaces in The Times with his article “The joy of global warming” (subscription required to read this). He argues again as he has for many years that the issue is something for later rather than for now (“ . . . global warming is a problem for the future but a benefit now . . . .”), but does make the cogent point that the emissions issue will not resolve itself until “green” energy comprehensively outcompetes fossil energy. However, he seems to miss the point that climate is a “stock problem” due to the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, so simply waiting until later may not be the right course of action at all (again, another lesson from the recent Shell scenarios).

So, as already noted, a bewildering array of messages. It is little wonder that policy makers, the public, academia and NGOs are collectively at a loss as to how to take the climate issue forward. Most readers are probably well versed on my view of what needs to be done, but if not, it’s here.

We tend to think of climate change as a relatively modern issue, perhaps marked by the testimony before Congress of James Hansen in summer 1988.  The terms “climate change” and “global warming” hardly appear in literature before 1975 and didn’t really take off until the mid-1980′s. 

There is of course Svante Arrhenius who published on the role of carbon dioxide in 1903 and even some others before that. There was certainly research on the issue throughout the 20th Century, including the work of Keeling and Callendar. But this week I was prompted to read a bit about the Revelle Factor (ocean uptake of CO₂, more basic research in the 20^th Century) and came across the following publication, endorsed and signed in 1965 by then President Lyndon Johnson and produced by the President’s Science Advisory Committee. It is a review on the then current state of the environment with a focus on pollutants. To my surprise, contained within it is a lengthy chapter on the rising levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels and its impact on global temperature. Was this the earliest political prompt on the issue from the science community?

In the days before computer models, climate lobbyists, sceptics, warmists and the pseudo-scientists who claim to have deep and insightful knowledge of atmospheric physics and chemistry (a.k.a. a variety of journalists, hobbyists, lawyers, political figures and others) which the atmospheric physicists themselves “apparently don’t have”, here is a first (??) thoughtful introduction and analysis by the science community, published by the United States Government on an issue that has become paramount today. It makes for interesting reading.

The paper looks at the atmospheric build up of CO₂, the likely further build up by 2000 as fossil fuels continue to be consumed, expected temperature rises, the possible impact on global sea levels as ice caps melt and concludes;

The climatic changes that may be produced by the increased CO₂ content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the chapter on Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide is the discussion on a geoengineering solution. The above conclusion goes on to say;

The possibilities of deliberately bringing about countervailing climatic changes therefore need to be thoroughly explored. A change in the radiation balance in the opposite direction to that which might result from the increase of atmospheric CO2 could be produced by raising the albedo, or reflectivity, of the earth . . . . . . .

Nearly fifty years later, not a great deal has been done in response to all this, although climate science has certainly advanced. But in his opening remarks, President Johnson calls for “highest priority of all to increasing the numbers and quality of the scientists and engineers working on problems related to the control and management of pollution“. The fact that some in our society have chosen to demonize these people and even mock their work is a sad state of affairs.  Tackling climate change means we need more scientists, with society fully behind young people focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  Governments too can play a bigger role, not only like Johnson did in recognizing the problem but by enacting enabling policy measures and delivering public funding to support progress in research and development.

In recent months, particularly in the EU, the prospect of a major demonstration of CCS across various sectors and employing a variety of technologies has slipped badly. Perhaps the bottom was reached when in the EU not a single CCS project was awarded funding under the first round of the NER300, even though this mechanism was originally proposed for CCS (insertion into Article 10a of the ETS Directive, see below). Given that the second round has been announced and EU allowance prices are now even lower, the chance of a successful project under the NER300 must be close to negligible.

Up to 300 million allowances in the new entrants’reserve shall be available until 31 December 2015 to help stimulate the construction and operation of up to 12 commercial demonstration projects that aim at the environmentally safe capture and geological storage (CCS) of CO2 as wellas demonstration projects of innovative renewable energytechnologies, in the territory of the Union.

Yet this is a technology that can make a real difference to the problem of rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. I went further than this is my recent posts arguing that it is the only technology that can satisfactorily resolve the issue. The recently released Shell New Lens Scenarios show the impact of delay, even in a world with rapid deployment of renewable energy and its eventual domination of the energy system (Oceans scenario). The Mountains scenario sees CCS getting going in earnest in 2030, with an important start-up phase which sees some 20 million tonnes per annum of CO2 stored in 2020, rising to 400 million tpa by 2029. This means that by  2025 some 25 GW of power generation fitted with CCS is needed – there is effectively none today.

At the Gleneagles Summit in 2005, G8 leaders committed to “work to accelerate the deployment and commercialisation of Carbon Capture and Storage technology”, with a further recommendation at the 2008 G8 Summit in Japan that “20 large-scale CCS demonstration projects should be launched by 2010”. Similarly, the EU Heads of Government declared the need for 12 projects in the EU by 2015. So far, four big projects are operating and two further projects are under construction, although all are linked with process emissions of industrial facilities (various natural gas projects, a synfuels plant in the USA and the Quest oil sands project) rather than the power sector. A number of much smaller R&D projects are also in various stages of development. The G8 call was arguably linked with the political desire to limit global emissions to meet a 2°C goal (or a trillion tonnes of cumulative carbon emissions), which in itself requires CCS deployed on a major scale. As such, it is hardly surprising to see the IEA now telling us that 2°C is pretty much off the table. In the Mountains Scenario, which sees CCS finally getting going some 15 years later than the G8 call, 2°C isn’t met either, although the overshoot, while a concern, isn’t dramatic.

The lead time for any new energy technology, from pilot to the beginnings of commercial deployment and then to materiality in the energy system (>1%) typically takes some 25-30 years. I wrote about this some time ago on the back of a Nature article submitted by a colleague in our scenarios team. The various stages within this process are important, including the need for commercial demonstration. This step begins to de-risk the technology for future business investment, bringing some level of certainty to expected capital expenditure and ongoing operating costs in particular. For CCS there are other benefits as well;

• A demonstration programme which comprises several projects begins to establish some infrastructure, which in turn lowers the cost for additional projects. Perhaps the best current example of this is in Rotterdam, where there are proposals for a CO2 pipeline loop in the industrial area of the city, connected to offshore storage in the North Sea. Given the large number of installations in the area, in combination with those further up the Rhine, real synergy is possible.
• In some regions (and Europe is one, Germany in particular) there are growing issues with public acceptance of CO2 storage, even though there is little ongoing storage underway. A demonstration programme offers the opportunity to allay the fears related to storage.
• Demonstration improves best practice in the operation of a CCS facility and related storage, particularly in a major grid dispatch situation.

Recently, policy makers in Brussels have started to voice the opinion that the EU could follow rather than lead on CCS. While they recognize the important role of the technology over the long term, they are questioning the need for the EU to invest and demonstrate in the short term. But waiting for others risks further delaying the deployment of this technology, which in turn is directly linked to the eventual accumulation of CO2 over this century and therefore temperature rise. Further, there are real EU projects on the drawing board today waiting for some stimulus, so doing nothing would be a real lost opportunity. The Commission is expected to publish a CCS paper later this month.

My good friend, Robert Swan, a polar explorer and environmentalist, often finishes his presentations with the quote;

“The Greatest Threat to Our Planet Is the Belief That Someone Else Will Save It.

It’s a good quote, even though it is a bit on the melodramatic side for me. But an appropriate CCS version might be:

“The real threat to the deployment of CCS is the assumption that someone else will demonstrate it.”

Late last week saw the public release of the new Shell energy scenarios, under the heading “New Lens Scenarios”. This is always a much anticipated moment in Shell, a bit like the Olympics as it only happens every few years – the last ones were released in 2008. In the interim many people across the company get involved in the scenario process through workshops and meetings, but the core team manages to keep the final product under wraps until the big day. While we might get an early sniff of the story, the final product always contains new themes and ideas, designed not to recast the status quo paradigm, but to challenge and surprise where possible.

So it is with Mountains and Oceans, the two new scenarios that look out to the very end of this century, a first in terms of “viewing distance”. I won’t attempt to tell the whole scenario story here, better to direct you to the website, here. But the climate stories buried within them are of real interest and should act as a wake up call for governments around the world.

In my post last week I discussed the idea that the CO2 issue is best thought of as a stock problem, in other words fossil CO2 released from the “geosphere” is accumulating in the ocean/atmosphere system and adding to the background greenhouse warming that makes this planet habitable. Roughly, each additional trillion tonnes of carbon that is released makes the planet another 2°C hotter. 

This has been shown by Allen et. al., Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne, Nature Vol 458, 30 April 2009. The key chart is shown below. 

This means that the focus of policymakers should be on the cumulative emissions of carbon over the long term, rather than on actual emissions on any given date. As such, climate policy needs to focus on limiting the accumulation, rather than simply slowing down the rate of emissions. For example, using energy more efficiently for the same level of production or GDP or supplementing the energy mix with renewable resources could well reduce annual emissions, but may do nothing to limit the accumulation over time. More renewable energy also gives policy makers a sense that they are addressing the problem of how to meet the surging demand for energy and also manage emissions, but over the long run it will just take a little longer to reach the same accumulation of carbon. Using up current proven reserves of oil gas and coal (about 900 billion tonnes of carbon), whether over 50 years, 60 years or 90 years, still delivers the same climate result.

By contrast, deploying carbon capture and storage (CCS) and eventually linking it with any use of fossil resources resolves the accumulation issue. The New Lens Scenarios demonstrate this point very well.

In the Mountains scenario, which sees natural gas use grow to become the backbone of the world energy supply, the politics of the day allows CCS to start serious deployment in the 2030s and rapidly increase to peak deployment in the 2060s. As the energy mix shifts later in the century, CCS use declines somewhat. By 2100, emissions are effectively zero, with the prospect of some drawdown of atmospheric CO2 in the 22^nd Century as CCS is combined with the use of biomass for energy. Importantly, cumulative emissions are capped and the amount of warming is limited, albeit not at 2°C.

The Oceans scenario tells a different story. The underlying politics and social trends see more focus on renewable energy early on, with CCS not seriously deployed until 20-30 years later than Mountains and never growing to the same level. Although solar PV becomes very substantial in the energy mix, the time it takes to win the day allows cumulative carbon emissions to grow well past the Mountains scenario, adding to the potential warming by the end of the century. Oceans also caps the accumulation by 2100.

Both scenarios make extensive use of CCS, but delaying deployment while lured by the attractiveness of a high renewable energy future has a real downside, more warming. 

We can see the evidence of government focus on renewable energy in the recent NER 300 funding in Europe. Despite the goal of establishing a CCS demonstration programme, no funds were delivered to CCS projects in Europe and the money was granted to renewable energy projects.   Green politics is fast becoming a distraction from the real climate priority of managing cumulative emissions, which requires CCS.

The scenarios are designed to tell stories and get us to think about the implications of the energy choices that we make. They are not forecasts or predictions, but they do represent viable alternative pathways which are economically, socially and technologically feasible. Enjoy the challenges posed.

For regular readers, this may seem like a repeat of recent themes, but there is a point which will become clearer as the new Shell scenarios are released later this week.

Over recent years, the focus for managing rising CO2 emissions has been a combination of targets, energy mix mandates, efficiency drives and various attempts at carbon pricing. The climate lexicon is full of phrases such as;

• “We need to reduce global emissions by 50% by 2050 (relative to 1990 / 2000 / 2005 . . .)”
• “We will reduce the CO2 intensity of the economy by 30%.
• “By 2020, renewable energy will make up 20% of the energy supply”
• “We must first improve energy efficiency, that can have a significant impact on emissions”
• The “Green Economy”
• “We must stimulate clean energy investment”
• “We need more clean energy for development”

The question is, are these the right types of policies for solving the CO2 problem? There is no doubt that such approaches have gained traction and wide support from policy makers, but in many instances they are the result of a desire to solve a broad range of topical issues, ranging from energy security and energy access to jobs and economic growth. There is apparently then an underlying assumption that because each of these has a link with reducing emissions or low emissions that this must also be a solution to the real elephant in the room, the rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. This may not be the case.

All of the above approaches appear to rest on the assumption that responding to climate change depends on managing the rate of emissions from the global economy, sometimes on an absolute basis but often on a relative basis, e.g. relative to GDP. But this doesn’t correspond with how the atmosphere sees our emissions of CO2. Rather, the rising level of CO2 in the atmosphere is ultimately a stock problem, meaning that what really matters is the total cumulative amount of CO2 that is released over time from fossil sources and land use change. Additional CO2 is accumulating in the ocean / atmosphere system at a much faster rate than it is being removed. The difference is several orders of magnitude when compared with its return to geological storage through processes such as weathering and ocean sedimentation, which is why in the context of managing the problem we can treat it as a stock issue or liken it to the rising level of water in a bathtub (where even a dripping tap will eventually result in overflow). By contrast, many other emissions to atmosphere don’t accumulate, they disperse, break down or drop out very rapidly.

Over the last 250 years since the beginning of the industrial era, some 570 billion tonnes of fossil and land-fixed carbon (over 2 trillion tonnes of CO2) has been released, which in turn has led to a shift in the global heat balance and a likely 1°C of warming before the ocean / earth / atmosphere system reaches a new equilibrium state. An accumulation of a trillion tonnes of carbon equates to the 2°C temperature goal, but as a median within a broad distribution of outcomes, both higher and lower (Allen et. al., Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne, Nature Vol 458, 30 April 2009). As long as the total fossil / fixed carbon released remains less than this amount over, say, a 500 year period, the climate problem is contained, at least to some extent.  

Thinking about climate change as a stock problem then changes the nature of the solution and the approach. Although emissions in 2020 or 2050 may be useful markers of progress, they do not necessarily guarantee success as they are measures of flow, not stock. For example, meeting a 2050 global goal of reducing emissions by 50% relative to 1990 would be a remarkable achievement, but of only modest value if emissions then stayed at this level and the stock accumulated well beyond the trillion tonne level, albeit at a later date than might have otherwise been the case.

Current global proven reserves of hydrocarbons (BP Statistical Review of World Energy) will release some 0.9 trillion tonnes of carbon when used, irrespective of how efficiently we might use them, how many wind turbines are built in the interim or even how many green jobs are created in the process. In combination with cement production and continued land use change, this will then take the cumulative carbon towards two trillion tonnes, with the likelihood of a temperature increase of well over 2°C.

Not using these reserves and leaving them in the ground permanently (i.e. forever) so as not to contribute to the ocean / atmosphere stock will only happen if we develop alternative energy sources that out compete them, without subsidy or support, 24/7 365 days a year. Another way forward  is to recognize that many economies around the world will choose to continue using the resources that they have, and therefore the focus should be on the development and deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS), which returns the carbon back to the “geosphere” instead of allowing it to accumulate in the biosphere.

CCS has the potential to address CO2 emissions on a scale equal to its production and at a cost that appears more than manageable by society. Most importantly, it fits the “stock model” thinking, which means that this particular solution matches the nature of the problem itself, rather than being a derivative of it. But as I have noted in previous posts, CCS is struggling politically to gain the necessary funding and momentum. There are no large scale CCS power generation plants operating in the world today, but only a tiny handful of industrial emission CCS facilities, with most under construction. New thinking and impetus will need to emerge to ensure that CCS becomes central to climate policy development, rather than it having to compete with the long list of other objectives that seem to prevail.

The issue of accumulating CO2 in the atmosphere is a relatively simple one, which can’t be addressed by energy efficiency standards, renewable directives or similar such measures. They may impact on the short term consumption of fossil fuels in one region for a limited period of time, but they offer no guarantee of permanent reductions nor do they deliver a guarantee of a lower cumulative stock of CO2 over time – in other words, the fossil fuel that they displace locally simply gets shifted geographically and / or temporally (used later) such that the same accumulation of CO2 results. The CO2 issue is only addressed by two approaches – either leaving the fossil fuel in the ground forever or using the fossil fuel and returning the CO2 to the ground via CCS.

Nearly a decade ago the then CEO of BP, Lord John Browne, gave a landmark presentation on climate change mitigation in the City of London. He introduced to the broader interest group (the work had already circulated in the academic sector) the idea of stabilization wedges, which had been developed by Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow at Princeton within a research program supported by BP. Each wedge represented one of a number of quantifiable actions that together were necessary to move from a business as usual (BAU) global emissions trajectory to a given atmospheric stabilization of CO2. In the initial study that stabilization was 500 ppm.

Wedges were on a very large scale (up to 1 GtC/annum) and consisted of actions such as:

• Increase fuel economy for 2 billion cars from 30 to 60 mpg
• Replace 1400 GW 50%-efficient coal plants with gas plants (four times the current production of gas-based power)
• Introduce CCS at 800 GW coal or 1600 GW natural gas (compared with 1060 GW coal in 1999) power plants.
• Add 700 GW (twice the current capacity) of nuclear fission capacity

This was the first real attempt to quantify the physical changes required in the energy system and turn that into an overriding story which people could actually understand. Many variations on the approach followed in subsequent years. More recently, researchers from universities in the USA and China looked again at the wedges and concluded that the scale of the issue had grown and that an even more ambitious set of wedges would be required to address the climate issue. The team behind this analysis introduced the concept of “phase-out” wedges, or wedges that represent the complete transition from energy infrastructure and land-use practices that emit CO2 (on a net basis) to the atmosphere to infrastructure and practices which do not. But this raises the major issue of stranded assets, or assets that have to be abandoned before their useful life has ended, typically because of economic impairment.

An alternative way of looking at this issue is to consider “lock-in” wedges. Each represents a chunk of infrastructure in use today that is very likely to continue operating until the end of its normal life, emitting CO2 while doing so and therefore adding to the growing accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. According to the Oxford University Department of Physics, cumulative carbon emissions today stand at some 567 billion tonnes (since 1750). Limiting the global temperature rise to 2°C requires limiting cumulative carbon emissions to one trillion tonnes. Each wedge adds towards a total committed block of emissions, which in turn would lock us into a 2°C or greater outcome should that commitment block be greater than 433 billion tonnes (1 trillion less 567 billion). Major wedges are described below:

1. The largest existing commitment is coal fired power stations. While the next generation of facilities may well be fitted with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) or at least be “CCS ready”, existing power stations may never be retrofitted. Today there is some 2000 GW of coal fired capacity, with each GW emitting about 6 million tonnes of CO2 per annum. More than half of this has been built in this century, so we might assume an average age of 16 years for the existing facilities. That leaves about 30 more years of operation. Even assuming that no more are built, that means cumulative CO2 emissions of 300 billion tonnes, or 80 billion tonnes of carbon. But we could well build another 1000 GW without CCS, so that alone adds another 225 billion tonnes of CO2, or 60 billion tonnes of carbon.
2. There are about 1 billion passenger cars in the world today and production is now over 60 million per annum. Assuming the average age of a current world car is 7-8 years and the average lifetime of a car is 15 years, this population could emit a further 10 billion tonnes of carbon. We will almost certainly build another billion internal combustion engine cars, which in turn will add a further 16 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere.
3. Natural gas use in power generation is growing rapidly, with some 1600 GW in use today, growing to 2000 GW over this decade. By the early 2020s, only a tiny fraction  of this capacity will have CCS. Given that a gas fired power station emits less than half the amount  CO2 compared to a similar sized coal plant, this fleet could see a further 140-150 billion tones of CO2, or about 40 billion tonnes of carbon emitted prior to retirement.
4. According to the IEA, residential use of gas results in 1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum. This is somewhat hard wired into cities, so difficult to dislodge any time soon (although having replaced our gas boiler at home with an electric one because of new UK flue regulations, it’s clearly not that difficult). Nevertheless, this could well continue for 30-40 years, so perhaps another 10 billion tonnes of carbon.
5. Aviation and shipping have both an existing fleet and show almost no sign of finding viable large scale routes to zero emissions (but biofuels may be the solution for both). Expect another thirty years of emissions at a minimum, which is another 10 billion tonnes of carbon.
6. Finally, there is manufacturing industry which emits 6 billion tonnes of CO2 per annum globally. This includes refineries, ferrous and nonferrous metal producers, cement plants, chemical plants, the pulp and paper industry and various other sectors. Capacity is renewing rapidly both because of growth and development but also because of the gradual decline of developed country capacity in favour of much larger and more efficient production in regions such as the Middle East. New capacity will operate for thirty years at least, so this sector could be responsible for another 120 billion tonnes or more of CO2 or about 32 billion tonnes of carbon.

The sum of these “climate lock-in wedges” now looks something like this:

This picture includes the major sources of emissions (e.g. oil fired power stations not included) and probably represents the best case in terms of retirement of existing assets. Staying within the trillion tonne limit therefore leaves little room for complacency with regards the next generation of assets and particularly the use of CCS in power generation. An alternate view of this would be to just look at the current proven reserves of oil, gas and coal which amount to about 1.3 trillion tonnes (BP Statistical review of World Energy). If totally consumed without the application of CCS, they would result in over 1 trillion tonnes of carbon emissions, bringing the total accumulation since 1750 to 1.7 trillion tonnes.

This week the organisation known as GLOBE (The Global Legislators’ Organisation supports national parliamentarians to develop and agree common legislative responses to the major challenges posed by sustainable development) met in London and launched its biannual review of national climate legislation. The GLOBE Climate Legislation Study is up to its third edition and covers the ongoing efforts in 33 countries. Of these, GLOBE claims that 18 countries have made substantial progress, 14 have made limited progress and one country has been singled out for taking a backwards step, Canada, but more on that later.

In their press release, GLOBE state that:

“The tide is beginning to turn decisively on tackling climate change, the defining material challenge of this century. In the past year alone, as described in this latest study by GLOBE International and the Grantham Research Institute, 32 out of 33 surveyed countries have introduced or are progressing significant climate-related legislation. In 2012 alone, 18 of the 33 countries made significant progress. This is a game-changing development, driven by emerging economies, but taking place across each and every continent. Most importantly it challenges how governments look at the international negotiations up to 2015 requiring much greater focus by governments to support national legislation.”

The report is a substantial piece of work and it steps through the programmes in each country in considerable detail, although the pages of tables raise the question as to what exactly is “climate legislation”. Legislation is categorised under the headings “Pricing carbon”, “Energy Demand”, “Energy Supply”, “Forests/Land Use”, “Adaptation” and so on. Of these, “Energy Demand” is largely energy efficiency measures and “Energy Supply” focuses principally on renewables (and nuclear in some countries). These two categories alone cover all but one of the countries (Nepal) surveyed, yet for the most part none of this is “climate legislation”. Rather, this is legislation that impacts the energy mix, but this does not necessarily translate into a reduction in emissions on a global basis and in many instances does not even lower national emissions. It simply augments the energy mix or lowers the energy and CO2 intensity of certain processes, which in turn can lead to greater overall use of energy and therefore increased emissions over the longer term. I have explored both these issues in previous postings, here and here.

This is not the case for the carbon pricing category, which GLOBE link to 11 of the 33 countries covered. But 4 of these are part of the EU and of the remaining countries only Australia has actually implemented the carbon price (arguably so has Japan, but the level is close to insignificant at about $1.50 per tonne). GLOBE also claim India has carbon pricing, but there is no such mechanism within the economy (there is a heavy focus on efficiency and a certificate trading system to drive it). Others include Mexico, South Africa, South Korea and China, all of which are in various stages of developing carbon pricing but none actually have.

Finally, there is the story around Canada. They are singled out as the only country to take a step backwards because of their decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol (the same treatment is not given to Japan and Russia though) and the absence of a nationally implemented policy framework. Perversely, Canada is one country that made real and tangible advances last year, although emissions continue to rise in this resource rich economy. Quebec implemented its cap-and-trade system, carbon pricing continued in British Columbia and Alberta and the Federal Government did introduce its carbon standards for power stations, which will mean no new coal plants (without CCS) –  even the EU cannot claim such an achievement. Most importantly, Canada managed to get a large scale CCS project approved and construction started – similar attempts in the EU failed disastrously in 2012. This point is worthy of note, although GLOBE don’t mention it, given the critical role that CCS needs to play in mitigating emissions throughout this century.

The steps being taken in many countries to better manage energy supply, demand and mix are welcome, but to argue that this marks a “decisive turn” on tackling climate change and is “game changing” seems to be overly optimistic. BP released their latest Energy Outlook 2030 this week as well, which sees CO2 emissions rising sharply to 42 billion tonnes per annum by 2030, this despite non-hydro renewable energy nearly quadrupling over that time period. In total, nuclear/hydro/renewables/bio moves from 16% to 23% of the energy mix.

Finally, a P.S. to my previous post on the observation by many that “global warming has stopped”. James Hansen has just published a good analysis of this  and finds that a number of factors are contributing to the lack of change in overall global average temperature. This includes the behaviour of the El Nino/La Nina system (ENSO) and aerosol loading in the atmosphere. But he also concludes that natural variability must be playing a role. Worth a read.

In a report released just before Christmas, the UK Met Office lowered its decadal forecast for the expected average global temperature. The press release noted that:

 Global average temperature is expected to remain between 0.28 °C and 0.59 °C (90% confidence range) above the long-term (1971-2000) average during the period 2013-2017, with values most likely to be about 0.43 °C higher than average. The warmest year in the 160-year Met Office Hadley Centre global temperature record in 1998, with a temperature of 0.40°C above long-term average. The forecast of continued global warming is largely driven by increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

This was a noticeable change from previous forecasts and was the result of a new climate model being put into use. The upper chart shown below portrays the earlier estimate of temperature rise while the lower chart shows the new estimate. The dark blue lines show the mean, with the light blue lines indicating an upper and lower bound.

The revision was initially ignored in the Christmas rush, but with the festive season now over, the story has reappeared. Some media outlets interpreted this as evidence that “global warming had stopped”, given that the medium term forecast was no different to the temperature peak seen in the late 1990s. One particular columnist caused the Met Office to release a point-by-point rebuttal of his claim that the Office was “useless”.

Despite the acrimony, the revision does raise the question as to what is happening. On the one hand we are seeing an increase in the number of severe heat events globally, yet on the other there has been seemingly little change in global average temperature for much of the last decade.

The starting point must always be the fact that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere will create a global heat imbalance, at least until a new steady state is reached (e.g. through changes in cloud cover, surface albedo etc. ). That steady state will also take many centuries to reach, given the huge inertia in the climate system. Current estimates put the size of the imbalance at about 3 W/m2 (Hansen et. al., 2009), which although small compared to the total heat arriving from the sun is significant compared to swings over the past million years that have resulted in large shifts in planetary ice cover.

The imbalance is offset to a degree by the effect of aerosols, which scatter incoming solar radiation and therefore act as coolants. There remains considerable uncertainty in the science community regarding the extent of the aerosol impact and how it might be changing over time. For example, the recent (10 years) sharp increase in coal use in China, much of which does not have sulphur emission handling, may well be adding enough sulphur (an efficient coolant) in the atmosphere to dampen the warming trend that would otherwise be seen. The charts below show the various forcings and the net effect. The large error bar illustrates the uncertainty linked with aerosols, to the extent that the red line (GHGs) and blue line (Aerosols) could cancel if at the extremes of their respective ranges.

The proxy we use to “measure global warming” is the surface temperature record, because both a recorded history and derived history of this measurement exists and because it’s relatively easy to take the necessary measurements. In the case of the recorded history, it is typically 100-150 years, but in the UK it starts in 1659 (1772 for the daily series). But real “global warming” is far broader than this and includes ocean heating (surface and deep ocean) and land ice melting.

Take as an example land ice melting. There is good evidence that this has risen considerably in recent years, with both Greenland and Antarctica showing a combined reduction in ice mass of some 400 billion tonnes per annum. The amount of energy required to melt this much ice (to overcome the latent heat of fusion) is in the same ballpark as the energy required to raise the temperature of the atmosphere by 0.02 deg.C in a single year (a tenth of the expected decadal increase of 0.2 deg.C). A very simple (probably too simple as someone is bound to comment) analogy is a glass of iced water, which on a hot day will remain cold until the ice melts. Then the temperature starts rising rapidly – but this is not to argue that the climate system will do the same.

As the additional heat building up in the atmosphere distributes through the ocean/ice/atmosphere system it is unlikely that a uniform and unchanging temperature rise in one particular part of this system would be the result. The interaction between them and the impact of short term aerosols will likely result in volatility in the surface temperature record. This has been seen before, most recently in the post war period when temperature remained flat for about 20 years. Some have attributed this to the aerosol loading from the rapid increase in coal burning in the USA and Europe over that period, none of which had sulphur scrubbing. As sulphur emissions fell sharply with the arrival of scrubbers, so the masking effect was removed and temperatures began rising.

To simply argue that “global warming has stopped” is short sighted. The evidence to support such a claim is not there.