Following on from my previous post, I spoke at the opening lunch of Singapore Energy Week on the same subject – a trillion tonne carbon budget. The core of the story went something like this.
The starting point is a trillion tonne “glass”, now just over half full with industrial revolution carbon (data from IEA and CDIAC), coming both from fossil fuels and deforestation (in reality it is probably worse than this as my simple analysis did not include the other greenhouse gases). The world is filling the “glass” at an increasingly rapid rate and it is now over half full.
If the world continues to fill the “glass” through to 2100, with emissions growing at 1% per annum (as an example – but energy related CO2 emissions have increased at 2% p.a. over the last 40 years – but have dropped by some 3% in the last 12-18 months) then we end up with some two trillion tonnes of carbon emitted since 1750, well above the trillion tonne level that equates to a 50% chance of hitting 2 degrees C – in other words, “two glasses completely full” and a world quite a bit warmer than 2 degrees C.
In reality, the current global hydrocarbon reserve picture does not fully support such a simple proposition. Using the oil, oil-sands, gas and coal reserves data in the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2009 and assuming that all those reserves are consumed, together with assumptions on the growth in cement manufacture and continued land use change, the carbon situation looks more like this – two “glasses”, each not quite full.
I then turned attention to solutions with a focus on the largest overall contributor, coal. Today there is some 1000 GW of coal fired power generation, producing about 8 billion tonnes of CO2 per annum. According to the International Energy Agency, emissions are growing at 6% p.a. The chart below shows growth is accelerating rapidly in China, but also in the rest of the world outside North America.
If we assume that emissions from coal fired power stations double by 2050, then plateau for the remainder of the century, then this alone fills the trillion tonne “glass” from where the world is today. Coal reserves can more than support such a move although it will be a challenging level of production.
One approach is to look to carbon capture and storage (CCS) for a solution. CCS represents a safe and sustainable approach for dealing with CO2 emissions and is based on a family of technologies all in use today. Although large scale end-to-end demonstration needs to happen urgently, deployment need not be some distant dream. As a thought experiment, what if we started building all new coal fired power stations with CCS and either retrofitted with CCS or replaced all existing coal fired power stations by 2050. The global carbon story through to 2100 would change radically and look something like this – a “glass and a bit”, so still not there, but a huge improvement.
This is a pretty heroic assumption, but nevertheless points toward a solution, or at least part of it. In reality we have to do much more, but the focus need only be in five areas. They are;
- More efficient use of the energy sources that are available;
- Increased use of renewable and nuclear sources for the provision of energy;
- Carbon dioxide capture and geological storage in tandem with the use of fossil fuel sources for the provision of energy [or with the chemical conversion of fossil derived materials for the provision of various manufactured products];
- Containment, destruction and reduced usage of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide;
- Reducing emissions through land use, land use change and forestry, including reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation.
I concluded with some discussion on the policy measures necessary to do all this, which I have discussed in many previous postings.
Hi David, More people seem to be talking about 1T CO2 left rather than 1T C total. Total mass is the same, just that the unit is different. If a budget narrative is to catch on, then it needs to be based on common lines. VHS and Betamax? Cheers, M
There is a simple, relatively painless way to halt global warming that all nations should find attractive and easy to agree to without protracted negotiation. Fossil fuel users would fund carbon capture.
Energy saving, nuclear, renewables, electric cars etc. are only ways of filling the energy gap that cutting carbon dioxide emissions will create and mankind has been very effectively filling energy gaps for centuries without the aid of agreed national or global strategies, taxes or caps. Carbon capture is different. It is a way of stopping pollution and will always add cost. You can legislate to stop pollution (which is economically inefficient) or you can use market forces by giving credits in a cap and trade system, credits against a carbon tax or by paying directly in fuel prices as I propose. If we drive carbon capture in these ways all the other things will happen too.
We should oblige fossil fuel producers and importers to contract for the capture and sequestration of a quantity of carbon dioxide equal to a proportion of that produced from the fuel they supply. The proportion could start at a few percent and build up. This would increase fuel price, encouraging energy saving, nuclear, renewables, electric cars etc., and provide full, immediate funding for carbon capture and storage.
The contract might permit capture to be delayed for a year if the quantity captured were increased by 10%, and for another year for another 10% etc. This would not only help with plant problems, but would also allow contracts to be placed today, providing a huge incentive to get carbon capture and storage up and running as soon as possible. It is not lack of know-how that is holding back carbon capture but the lack of an incentive to apply it.
We must soon stop carbon emissions from power generation, cement manufacture etc. and substitute electricity for fuel use in many domestic, industrial and transport applications. Taxing carbon, capping emissions or contracting for carbon capture when fuel is produced could all provide the economic incentive but unless the rest of the world joins in they will not solve the problem.
Contracting for carbon capture is guaranteed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to whatever annual target is set and is easy for everyone to agree to because:
It will appeal to rapidly growing and mature countries alike. There are no national caps to restrict relative growth.
It will allow all industries in all countries to compete on a level playing field. There are no carbon tax or carbon credit differentials.
Because there is only one number to agree, the global annual target, extensive international negotiations will be unnecessary. There will be no national targets to haggle over and perhaps never meet. There will be no issue about who gets the revenue from a carbon tax or what the rate should be or who gets free allowances (or the revenue from an auction) with cap and trade.
Enforcement is straightforward and does not rely on the co-operation of every country. The contracts would be traded and recorded centrally, mostly placed and paid for by the international energy companies. If countries were uncooperative and used their own fuel internally without contracting for carbon capture, a central monitoring organisation could impose an increased capture proportion on imports or exports of fuel for that country to compensate.
So what will it cost? The simple answer is that carbon capture and storage could cost 50 euros per tonne of carbon dioxide emission avoided. This is equivalent to $32/barrel of oil but the contract would only cost a proportion of that.
The complicated answer is that it is only practical to capture carbon dioxide from large point sources like power stations. Forcing 75% capture on the global market through my proposal would drive fuel price up and electricity price down until we switched from fuel to electricity for many industrial, domestic and transport applications.
The simple cost is modest compared to recent price changes so why are we waiting? Perhaps within as little as twenty-five years we could be defining the proportion of carbon to be captured, based on fossil fuel production at the time, such that global emissions were contained at the level that the oceans absorb annually. That is about 2.2 billion tonnes of carbon per year (25% of current emissions). Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration would then stop rising.
I have thought about moving on to a cap and trade system, still based around a global target and implemented at the point of fuel production, once nearly all power stations etc. have carbon capture. This would avoid the incentive to build new power plant simply to create more carbon to capture and then dumping the power on the market, when perhaps nuclear or wind would have been cheaper. The problem then is who gets the revenue from auctioning the allowances. This is probably into trillions of dollars, just look how fuel prices rocketed last year when supply and demand got out of step. Fuel producers could well decide to form a cartel, cut supply to the required level and do the whole job for the rest of us, keeping the premium for themselves.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/24/shell-chief-carbon-tax
Hi David, I guess this interview might be the subject of you next blog? /Mark
David – Perhaps you should ask for a transfer to Shell’s upstream division for more drilling of oil and more gas fields in the USA.
Re. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: November 20th, 2009
Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?
Shell, Exxon / Mobil and others can start backing off from cajoling with idiots in the liberal universities. There can be improvements to better use of energy – especially nuclear – for many other reasons.
See article below – there have been many mainstream media excuses that it was just some of the idiots’ emails taken out of context – ya Right – its about making sure of more funding for their projects so they aren’t the ones unemployed. Junk science surely keeps young people from entering the real science field – so please forward the article by James Delingpole to others. Then we can have more stalwarts from universities such as MIT’s Prof. Den Hartog and others such as Richard Feynman & Judson Swearingen.
Hopefully there goes a new Kyoto treaty and I would bet is the demise of “Cap & Trade” – err Cap & Tax – THANK GOD
I had known about the late John Daly ( http://www.john-daly.com ) for years (not the boozing golfer) – he is laughing with the angels. See the reference by the idiots in the article.