Category: Energy efficiency

Pathways to 1.5°C

dchone June 11, 2021

In 2018 when the IPCC released their Special Report on 1.5°C, they presented four archetype scenarios to help readers understand that there were fundamentally different approaches to limit long term warming to 1.5°C or below. The scenario pathways are shown below and vary significantly in their approach, time horizon and use of sinks.

All four scenarios (P1, P2, P3, P4) are based around the same carbon budget, or total cumulative emissions of 420 Gt from 1.1.2018 consistent with providing a 66% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C. Whether the carbon budget is aligned with 420 Gt (67^th percentile) or 580 Gt (50^th percentile), it represents a very limited amount given that annual CO₂ emissions are in excess of 40 Gt, so these represent 10-15 years of emissions at current levels. Since this IPCC publication, a further 160 Gt will have been emitted by society by the end of 2021, meaning that the budget is reduced to 260 – 420 Gt.

In attempting to align with a very limited carbon budget, the P1 scenario imagines a world of falling overall energy use and a very rapid shift away from fossil fuels. There is no use of geological storage of CO₂ and a modest reliance on natural sinks, although in doing so the world must shift away from net-deforestation by the 2040s. By contrast, the P4 scenario sees increasing demand for energy and as a consequence, a much more difficult decarbonisation journey that involves considerable use of sinks in the second half of the century. Notably, the P4 scenario exceeds the carbon budget by quite some amount with peak emissions to the atmosphere of 900 Gt, before reining in the amount to 200 Gt by 2100. This results in P4 being a so-called overshoot scenario, in that the world exceeds 1.5°C during the century before returning to 1.5°C and below by the end of the century.

All the above might seem a bit academic, but it became very real recently when the IEA released their 1.5°C scenario and some commentators began comparing it to one of the very few other 1.5°C scenarios, notably Sky 1.5 from Shell.

In fact, the two scenarios are at near opposite ends of the P1 to P4 spectrum.

The IEA 1.5°C scenario looks at the period from 2020 to 2050 and presents a proposal for the problem of containing emissions to a 500 Gt carbon budget (the 580 Gt IPCC number less 80 Gt for the years 2018 and 2019). Apart from recognising that the land based system is likely to reduce this budget by a further 40 Gt over the period (i.e. reducing it to 460 Gt), the analysis limits itself to the energy system and the changes that would be required to meet a 460 Gt cumulative emissions constraint within a 30 year time frame. As is the case in similar scenarios, including Sky 1.5, their analysis assumes rapid electrification of final energy (e.g. electric cars instead of gasoline) and makes use of renewables and nuclear power generation to produce the electricity. They introduce hydrogen as an energy carrier, make use of bioenergy and include carbon capture and storage (CCS) where fossil fuel remains in use. For the latter, the IEA deploy CCS directly on facilities that use fossil fuels and indirectly through direct air capture for fossil fuel use in applications such as aviation.

All the above steps are well understood, but even given rapid and stretching deployment rates of all technologies, these steps are unlikely to contain emissions to less than 500 Gt in under thirty years. This is because of the expected increase in overall energy use, a consequence of economic growth, the general rise in population and the shift of billions of people from very low energy use lifestyles to at least modest energy use, a simple outcome of development and the provision of basic services like lighting, clean water, food refrigeration and some mobility.

As such, energy modelers looking at a very constrained time frame of 30 years must make the assumption that energy growth can be contained or even fall, as in the IPCC P1 scenario. This is exactly what the IEA have done to meet the carbon constraint. In the 1.5°C Scenario primary energy demand falls from 612 EJ in 2019 to 543 EJ in 2050, a drop of over 10%. Efficiency will certainly help deliver such an outcome and the use of renewable electricity gives the story a big boost as the thermal losses in power stations vanish, although new losses emerge through the use of transmission and storage. But the big story is the widespread assumption of behavioural change across society to reduce energy demand. The chosen measures include steps such as;

Ride-sharing in all urban car trips
Reducing motorway / freeway speeds to below 100 kph / 60 mph.
Increasing temperatures in air conditioned vehicles and buildings.
Lowering temperatures in heated buildings.
Replacing short flights with high speed rail.
Limiting long haul air travel to 2019 levels.

With low energy demand and high deployment rates of new energy technologies it then becomes possible to resolve the carbon budget within a 30 year time frame.

At the other end of the spectrum is the Sky 1.5 scenario, which tackles the problem of a limited carbon budget in a very different way. Sky 1.5 looks at the period from 2020 to 2100, an 80 year time frame, and starts with an expectation of rising global energy demand, even assuming significant energy efficiency improvements across society. The growth in population and the demand for energy services, including significant new demand from developing countries for basic services, cannot be contained and energy demand rises. This immediately poses a challenge in that rising demand more quickly consumes the available carbon budget at the front end, when alternative energy technologies and sinks have not been deployed.

Sky 1.5 also recognises that for many energy technologies, the 2020s still remain a period of development and limited deployment and even for more mature technologies such as solar and wind, a period of early growth where change on a global scale will remain limited.

The solution to this approach is to accept that, at least in the short term, the carbon budget may be consumed and the temperature it is linked to (1.5°C in this case) potentially surpassed for a period of time. The subsequent rapid deployment of sink capacity, both manmade in the form of air capture with geological storage and natural as reforestation, then offers the possibility of a period of net-negative emissions later in the century, to redress the imbalance and reduce cumulative carbon dioxide emissions and therefore temperature. This is the approach that Sky 1.5 takes, as do the IPCC P3 and P4 scenarios. Sky 1.5 takes this approach out of necessity, in that the scenario reaches a limit on energy technology deployment and does not foresee a fall in energy demand.

The end carbon budget for both the IEA 1.5°C scenario and Sky 1.5 are similar, but the IEA restricts itself to a thirty year time-frame, whereas Sky 1.5 operates over an eighty year time-frame. Sky 1.5 is also remodeled by MIT within their integrated assessment model to give a temperature outcome, rather than simply using the IPCC central estimate for a carbon budget. The two scenarios are attempting to answer the same question, but take very different approaches to doing so. There is no right or wrong here, just different ways of solving a tough problem.

Note: Scenarios don’t describe what will happen, or what should happen, rather they explore what could happen. Scenarios are not predictions, strategies or business plans. Please read the full Disclaimer here.

A very different pathway forwards for India

dchone March 31, 2021

As COP 26 approaches, the UK government (as President of the COP) and the UNFCCC are encouraging as many countries as possible, in accordance with Paragraph 36 of the Paris Agreement Decision Text, to communicate mid-century, long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies. These should ideally include a net-zero emissions goal for the same time period as such ambitious national contributions are required from all countries to meet the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement. To date, about 30 such strategies have been posted on the UNFCCC website.

For India, a mid-century goal of net-zero emissions points to a fundamentally different development pathway to one that might have been imagined just a few years ago. While the busyness and intensity of traffic and commerce in Indian cities like Mumbai and Delhi give the impression of a country bound to fossil fuels, the reality is very different. With around 1.4 billion people in total and a large rural population engaged in agricultural activities, per capita CO₂ emissions – at 1.8 tonnes per person in 2015 – are around a ninth of those in the USA and around a third of the global average of 4.8 tonnes per person.

However, overall, India is now the planet’s third-largest emitter of CO₂, behind China and the USA. Some costs of the country’s dynamic growth are increasingly visible, namely major congestion in urban centres and declining air quality.

The emissions focus should be on where India might go, rather than where it has been. For example, there are about 3 billion tonnes of steel in use within the country, in buildings, cars, appliances, pipelines and industrial plants. But as India aspires to be a developed economy, that number will likely rise to around 15 billion tonnes. Every other country has built its steel infrastructure with coal as the energy source, but if India does the same that could add another 24 billion tonnes of CO₂ to the atmosphere globally, based on production emissions of about 2 tonnes of CO₂ per tonne of iron. A good proportion of this would come from smelters in India, many of which may not have even been built yet. This is 6% of the IPCC 1.5°C carbon budget globally and would create a significant emissions spike, even considering efficiency improvements in smelting and optimised recycling. It will also add to the local environmental stresses that people in India feel each and every day. So a different smelting pathway should be considered and that is just one aspect of India’s future national development.

Similarly, the Indian electricity sector is largely based on coal fired generation, but here there are visible signs of change as solar and wind become the preferred choices for new generation capacity. By 2020, India had all but met its Nationally Determined Contribution goal of 40% cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030 (solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, biomass). Whether its cars, trucks, housing, factories or commercial buildings, the story is largely the same; what is yet to come far exceeds what is already there.

This points to a strategic emissions focus for India that is very different to countries with substantial legacy infrastructure. Rather than needing to dislodge the status quo, India has the opportunity to embark on a different development pathway based around cleaner energy technologies and efficiency. These future choices will be important, not just at the national level when making important infrastructure decisions, but also in homes. At the household level, ownership of domestic appliances such as washing machines, refrigerators and air conditioners is relatively low, varying between 15% and 30%, depending on the appliance. As the country develops over the coming 30 years, appliance ownership may well head towards the 90% level seen in much of the world. Once in use these appliances will consume energy, so the choice of model and efficiency rating will be important. These appliances could add 300-500 terrawatt-hours a year to electricity demand, nearly a third of that generated in 2019, but lower efficiency choices might double this amount.

But what might such a development pathway look like? Over recent months the Shell scenario team and Shell India have worked with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) of India to illustrate what the future could hold. In this collaboration the team developed a Net-Zero Emissions (NZE) scenario, the principle focus of the work, to examine whether adequate opportunities exist to fully decarbonise the energy sector; areas where India’s energy sector does not have enough choices for full decarbonisation by 2050 are also highlighted. From a second scenario, Towards Net-Zero (TNZ), barriers to change that might emerge are revealed. Energy efficiency, electrification and a switch towards decarbonised fuels are the three main pillars of India’s energy strategy, with the need for a transformative move towards renewable electricity, hydrogen and bioenergy as key fuels. This analysis indicates that the industrial and heavy transport sectors are likely to face limits in achieving full decarbonisation, primarily due to technological constraints which leave residual emissions in the system. This necessitates the need for carbon removal options to achieve net-zero emissions, including both technical and natural solutions.

An overview of the pathway reveals both radical and very rapid change. For example, in India today, there is a successful programme of solar PV installation under way, but by 2030 as solar starts to dominate the generation mix in the NZE scenario, it will need to be matched by large-scale energy storage to manage intermittency. More than 1,000 gigawatts of solar PV, 700 GW of which with matching storage, needs to be installed through the 2020s, far exceeding the amount of solar PV installed over the last decade. This level of deployment is challenging, even in global terms. In 2019 global solar module production was about 140 GW, but growing at some 20% per year. Even if growth continues at this rate through the 2020s, the demand in India for modules under NZE would still equate to 20% of global supply. Embodied within the pathway is a monumental challenge, but one that is worth aiming to achieve.

The scenario analysis was released last week and can be found here. The analysis incorporates both the pathway forwards and the policy framework required to get there.

Getting to net-zero emissions in the UK

dchone May 9, 2019

Last week the Climate Change Committee (CCC) in the UK released its much anticipated report which is recommending that the government revise its emissions goal to net-zero in 2050. The Committee notes that this is an appropriate UK contribution towards the global need of meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. The recommendation also follows in the wake of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C, which identified 2050 as the year in which the global economy should attempt to reach net-zero emissions in order to limit warming to 1.5°C with a 66% probability.

The recommendation is a shift from the current UK target which would see the country reach an 80% reduction by 2050, in support of which the country is broadly on track to deliver the first 3 interim carbon budgets to 2022. However, as it looks past 2022 the CCC notes there is insufficient early development of some technologies for the heavy lifting ahead. Examples of this include carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen for a variety of uses.

Nevertheless, the state of technology development, deployment and availability has shifted since the time of the first UK target back in 2008. The cost of wind and solar has dropped significantly, offshore wind is now a viable proposition, many electric car models are available and while not in the UK, some 20 CCS facilities are now running in various parts of the world. All of the technologies required to do the job set out by the CCC are in plain sight, although a number still require significant UK development for deployment in this country. The CCC report is also very clear on this issue.

2050 is just over thirty years away and that same time period reflecting backwards marks the time that I first arrived in the UK with Shell. In the next 30 years the whole energy system will need to shift to achieve net-zero emissions, but how does that compare with the changes seen over the last 30 years. While two thirds of that period has not been covered by the Climate Change Act and its carbon budgets, all but three years have been covered by the UK ratification of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Sankey diagrams below reflect the change over the period, although the most recent from the IEA are 2016, so they won’t show the last two years of renewable energy development.

Overall primary energy consumption has fallen, with the most visible change being the shift away from coal and towards natural gas in power generation. Both bioenergy and renewables have also added to the generation mix. Nuclear plays an important and steady base load function. Natural gas is now the dominant contributor to the current power generation sector and in the past year there have been periods where coal has not played a role at all. Back in 1989 coal made up most of the generating capacity. Oil demand within the UK has hardly changed over thirty years (slightly up) although production has halved.

As noted above, one feature that has surged since 2016 is the proportion of renewable energy in the generation mix. Recent figures from BEIS show that wind and solar have now exceeded nuclear on a quarterly basis.

In the final energy system, the changes are more nuanced. The overall share of electricity has moved from 16.7% of final energy to 20.4%, or a shift of 3.7% points in 27 years. The global rate of change is tracking at 2% points per decade, so the UK is well short of that pace of transition. A net zero emissions economy would likely need electricity to be the major component of final energy, say around 60%, so the UK rate of change will need to shift from 1.37% points per decade to around 11% points in each of the coming decades.

Transport hasn’t shifted at all in the past 30 years, with oil use in transport slightly increasing. Electricity is just starting to creep into this mix, but pure electric vehicles have reached only 0.7% (2018) of new car sales. Worryingly, the total number of petrol and diesel cars registered in the UK in 2018 was unchanged from 2013, a period which has seen the first major push to get consumers to go electric. Reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 will not just mean seeing all new purchases as electric, but seeing all new purchases from about 2035 onwards as electric. It can take up to 15 years to completely turn over the entire on-the-road fleet, although a future government could presumably accelerate this process with a buy-back-and-scrap scheme.

In the industrial sector, energy consumption has dropped by nearly a third, presumably through efficiency improvements as industrial output has hardly changed (see chart below). Importantly, electricity use has stayed largely the same. This means that the sector is gradually electrifying, although again the pace of change is below that required.
UK Industrial Production (1970-2019).

Then there are the tricky bits, where the UK has made only limited progress. The CCC notes that radical change is needed in home heating, including a shift to hydrogen and heat pumps, with support from much better home insulation. But residential natural gas use has marginally increased in 30 years, despite significant improvements in boiler efficiency and the use of electricity instead of gas for new apartment buildings. One highlight in this area is the recent milestone of one million homes now being supplied with biomethane.

The overall change in 30 years has been one of continually falling greenhouse gas emissions, with much of the gain coming from natural gas replacing coal and a fall in industrial energy use. While the impetus for change over the last 30 years was perhaps not as great as it is now, the overall shift is symptomatic of typical energy system dynamics; rapid adjustment has never been a feature, primarily due to the large capital stock involved. Outside the energy sector change over the same period has been dramatic. In 1989 there was no internet, no social media, hardly a mobile phone to be seen and televisions were defined more by their depth than their width. So can the UK reach these sorts of transition rates and achieve the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050?

In the power generation sector, zero emissions should be entirely achievable in that time frame. Renewables are surging and new nuclear capacity is now under construction (although even getting that started took a decade). Similarly, with the models on offer or on their way, passenger vehicles could be entirely electric and various cities across the UK have demonstrated that electric buses are now a viable option. But there is no real sign of change for heavy goods vehicles, shipping or aviation. Perhaps the biggest challenge sits with the use of natural gas in homes and industry. It is easy to use, clean, provides a very high heat load and is backed by extensive infrastructure. Hydrogen and electrification are potential pathways forward, but as noted the electrification rate of change has to shift by nearly an order of magnitude. For hydrogen there are promising signs of change with the government now funding a major programme on supply and conversion of existing facilities away from natural gas.

Finally, there is carbon capture and storage (CCS), which may be a simpler solution in many applications than attempting to dislodge natural gas. CCS in combination with direct air capture (still a nascent technology) may also be needed to balance out emissions in sectors such as aviation. Even the production of hydrogen may be easiest at scale from natural gas, which would then also require CCS. The UK has tried and tried again with CCS, but there is still no operational facility to show for all the efforts made. Yet the UK is both pipeline dense and geologically gifted in terms of storage potential, so deployment could proceed given the right incentives to begin.

The Climate Change Committee have put forward a bold recommendation, but it is not without immense challenge. It ought to be possible to achieve the 2050 goal of net-zero emissions, but it won’t happen without some significant nudging by the government in a number of key areas. Policy decisions over the coming five years may well set the scene for the next twenty, so there is everything to play for.

A new pathway to Paris

dchone February 6, 2019

A new book that outlines a pathway to meet the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement has been released for open access online , but is also available in hard copy from March 7th on Amazon. The work has been conducted by various academic institutions and is largely sponsored by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. The route chosen is to meet all energy needs with renewables such as wind, solar and hydroelectric with the consequent phase-out of fossil fuel use for all energy needs by 2050. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not considered as an option, but natural sinks play an important role through large scale land restoration and reforestation. So rapid is the proposed transition that emissions fall sharply from next year (2020) and fossil fuel consumption is reduced by 60% in just a decade. An important additional component is an overall reduction in energy demand through a very strong efficiency drive.

There are six major components to the transition, with the first five relating to objective of 100% renewables for all energy use;

Increased capacity to generate electricity mostly through solar and wind power, enabling the electrification of all energy uses including power, heating, transportation, and even industrial uses.
Increased storage capacity in the form of battery arrays and pumped hydroelectric (which uses excess generation to pump water up to a reservoir releasing the energy when needed).
Improved energy efficiency – decreasing overall energy consumption, especially in the developed world, by making buildings, cities, and vehicles more efficient.
Re-purposing the existing gas pipeline and storage infrastructure to deliver hydrogen produced by renewable sources.
A gradual retraining of the energy workforce to participate in the burgeoning green economy.
Land restoration and reforestation to meet negative emissions requirements.

Following the IPCC 1.5° Special Report last October (SR15), it is clear that the lowest risk pathway in terms of climate impact is one that sees emissions fall rapidly, with minimal temperature overshoot before the end of the century. The book effectively follows the pathway P1 (no CCS, rapid fall in fossil fuel use) set out in SR15, although they make more extensive use of land sinks than P1.

Source: IPCC SR15

The IPCC P1-P4 archetype pathways can be categorized in terms of final energy demand and their use of sinks (both natural and artificial, e.g. bio-energy with CCS or BECCS), which also allows a comparison with the Shell Sky Scenario that featured in SR15.

Sky is akin to the SR15 P4 pathway, in that the additional energy demand they both foresee leads to extensive use of sinks to balance overall emissions and deliver a 1.5°C outcome. Within the Sky scenario efficiency plays a major role in curbing demand, but final energy demand still rises throughout the century (see chart below), albeit coming close to a plateau from 2080. This is driven primarily by the demands of some 2-3 billion people moving from modest income to middle income. In addition, there are a further 2-3 billion people moving from little income to modest or even middle income. Even with a major efficiency push, energy demand just doesn’t fall that easily, unless of course consumers hold back in their demand for energy services, e.g. travelling by air.

Sky, like P4, doesn’t see emissions falling until about 2030 in that this is the minimum time the scenario requires to build the necessary political and technical capacity to introduce carbon prices, ramp up production of various technologies and at least begin developing further out technologies such as hydrogen use for metallurgical smelting.

But the new pathway proposed in the publication seemingly allows no time for such change. As noted, under that pathway emissions fall sharply from 2020, yet we are currently in a period of sharply rising emissions (according to an analysis by the Global Carbon Project, 2018 emissions are estimated to have risen by 2.7% compared to 2017). While such a fall would be an ideal outcome and for a better than 50% chance of being below 1.5° is probably required, the difficult question that must nevertheless be answered is by what process this happens? In the Sky Scenario it was proposed that rapid ratcheting of NDCs throughout the 2020s could lead to emissions beginning to fall by 2030.

A further challenge is the decision by the authors not to employ any form of CCS and also phase out all fossil fuel use by the 2050s. For sectors such as aviation, the likely energy source in 2050 will still be hydrocarbon liquids, even if new engine technologies have begun to appear. Some planes that will be flying in 2050 are being built now and there is no line of sight to an alternative technology, so presumably the current generation of planes will continue to be built for several decades.

With no CCS, it means that the fuels must be synthetically produced, either from biomass or by chemical conversion of hydrogen (generated by electrolysis of water using solar energy) and carbon dioxide (extracted from the air), such that they have a net-zero impact on atmospheric carbon dioxide. But these synthesis technologies hardly exist today, although parts of the possible process do (the Shell synthetic fuel plant in Qatar which uses natural gas as the starting point). Just meeting aviation and marine needs with synthetic fuel plants in 2050 would require some 100 large scale facilities, starting from a current position of zero (or perhaps two, if the synthesis reactors in the handful of existing facilities were re-purposed).

A 100% renewable energy world will still require an energy carrier that isn’t electricity, for example for intense heat in certain combustion applications. Hydrogen could be such a carrier and could also be used for energy storage as well as having a role in liquid fuel synthesis. But the scale of a global hydrogen industry to support the renewable energy world would far exceed the global Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry we have today. The LNG industry includes around 300 million tonnes per annum of liquefaction capacity and some 400 LNG tankers. That amounts to about 15 EJ of final energy compared to the current global primary energy demand of 500 EJ. In a completely new energy system in 2050, a role for hydrogen as an energy carrier that reached 50 EJ would imply an industry that was four times the size of the current LNG system. The current LNG system has emerged over a period of 60 years; building a system four times the size in 30 years seems unlikely.

There is no doubt that the 1.5°C Paris pathway outlined in the book is an incredibly ambitious one, but it may even be beyond the bounds of the possible. It will take some time to review the full publication, so I hope to report back in the coming weeks on various aspects of the story presented.

Note: Scenarios are not intended to be predictions of likely future events or outcomes and investors should not rely on them when making an investment decision with regard to Royal Dutch Shell plc securities. Please read the full cautionary note in http://www.shell.com/skyscenario.

Drivers behind flattening CO2 emissions

dchone March 29, 2017

The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently reported that carbon dioxide emissions from energy use remained flat in 2016, the third year in a row. This is a noticeable departure from the 21^st century trend which has seen global carbon dioxide emissions rise by some 40% in just 14 years. The Guardian reported this story and added the by-line “International Energy Agency report puts halt in emissions from energy down to growth in renewable power”. But the story within the energy system has more facets than this (Data sourced from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy).

Although global growth hasn’t been outstanding in recent years, it has nevertheless chugged along at around 2.5-3%. Energy use has also increased, albeit at a lower rate of some 1% per annum. This is at the lower end of the expected range of energy vs. GDP, but it is probably too early to say that this represents a longer term shift in this relationship. However, this could be the case if efficiency improvements can outpace economic development or at least come close.

Renewable energy is growing rapidly, although this is mainly in the area of electricity generation. From 2014 to 2015 solar and wind generation increased globally by about 200 TWh, which was nearly equal to the overall growth in electricity generation for that year. As an aside, BP reported that the overall electricity growth rate in 2015 was down on 2014 (2.4%) and remained well below the 10-year trend (2.8%). This is slightly concerning as electrification of the energy system is a key requirement for long term emissions reduction. Electricity generation needs to be accelerating compared to overall energy demand growth.

Although the 2016 data isn’t available yet, BP reported that coal use declined globally in 2015 vs. 2014 by 1.8% and natural gas use increased. While most of this could be attributed to the USA and Canada, China also saw a notable coal decline along with growth in natural gas use. The global coal use reduction is equivalent to nearly 300 million tonnes CO2, or about 0.8% of global emissions. Any replacement with natural gas would result in about half the emissions. This is very noticeable in the USA where coal use fell in 2015 by 13%, natural gas use grew by 3% (but against a larger absolute use), oil demand increased by 3%, but emissions declined by 2.6%.

Coal use is declining for a number of reasons;

The surge in natural gas production in the USA in particular, triggering the closure of older coal fired power stations that cannot meet new environmental regulations.
Air quality concerns in China, leading to a shutdown of coal fired industry and power generation around the major cities.
Some mothballing or closure of overcapacity in metallurgical industries in China.
The impact of a modest carbon price in a number of jurisdictions and some government imposed moratoriums on new coal generation construction (e.g. Canada).

However, coal use continues to increase sharply in a number of developing countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Colombia and Indonesia. Current expectations are that this will continue.

Oil use continues to increase, with BP reporting a global rise from 2014 to 2015 of 2%.

The final story is therefore one of several parts and it would appear that this trend has continued into 2016 although further data will be required for verification;

Global growth is modest, but energy use increases are trending at the lower part of the expected rise for this level of economic growth.
Coal use is declining, with natural gas filling much of the gap but at lower emissions.
Renewables are growing quickly, covering most of the increase in electricity generation, but not quite all.
Oil demand continues to increase, with its growing emissions being offset by the reduction in coal use.

The end result is that flattening in global emissions that has been seen for three years now.

Making the most of hydrogen

dchone February 24, 2017

As hydrogen refueling stations begin to appear, including one from Shell opening near London, Toyota makes its Mirai hydrogen fuel cell vehicle more widely available and iron ore smelters even look to hydrogen as an alternative reducing agent (rather than coal) that doesn’t involve carbon, it would appear that this important energy carrier is beginning to show its potential.

The final energy (i.e. energy we use) mix in use today is less than 20% electricity, in large part dictated by the need to transport, store and use energy well away and disconnected from the point of production. Vehicles are a common example of this, with the requirement to power them on the move. While electricity storage is coming of age with batteries, hydrogen offers an alternative route forward that provides much of the flexibility we have come to rely upon with liquid fuels.

Hydrogen also offers the possibility of providing intense heat very quickly in a confined area, such as required by various industrial processes. For these reasons, and as society looks to shift away from direct use of fossil fuels for the purpose of carbon dioxide mitigation or simply needs to augment the energy system with other carriers, hydrogen shouldn’t be ignored.

Hydrogen production comes via three routes. The first is as a by-product from some industrial processes (e.g. chlorine manufacture). When I first started work in a Shell refinery I was assigned to follow the operation of the platformer, a unit which increases the octane number of naphtha by creating cyclic ring compounds (aromatics). These have a lower hydrogen content than straight chain molecules, so hydrogen is a byproduct. For the most part this source of hydrogen is in full use, either within other processes in refineries or in neighbouring facilities.

The second is steam reforming of natural gas, which produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Most industrial hydrogen in the world today is produced via this route. The carbon dioxide is relatively pure and can be used or captured and stored, making the process very carbon efficient. In the Shell refinery in the Netherlands some carbon dioxide from its hydrogen manufacturing unit is sold to local greenhouses to provide the enhanced growing conditions that they need. In Alberta, Canada, one million tonnes per annum of carbon dioxide from the Shell Scotford Refinery hydrogen unit is captured and geologically stored.

Finally, hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis of water, an experiment almost everybody has done in chemistry class at school. This route has renewable energy enthusiasts very excited as it can provide a ready use of electricity when wind and solar production exceeds demand, a situation many grids may face as renewable energy penetration reaches very high levels. But this process suffers from a relatively low efficiency, with only a few percent of global hydrogen being produced via this route. Generating hydrogen by electrolysis is only (optimally) about 60% efficient and the use of this hydrogen in a car is (optimally) also only about 60% efficient, so two thirds of the energy input is lost. This can be improved to some extent if heat recovery methods are employed.

The economics of the electrolysis route can be difficult, particularly if it relies on renewable energy surpluses, which won’t always be available. That would leave the electrolyzer idle or having to use purpose generated electricity. Further, most current electrolyzers vent the oxygen that is made, which is effectively waste energy and explains why the process can only be 60% efficient if hydrogen is the only product being made.

The global oxygen industry is very large; today it is around 500+ million tonnes per annum, with the metallurgical industry being the largest consumer. Oxygen is typically manufactured by cryogenic distillation of air. In the context of a hydrogen economy based on electrolysis rather than steam reforming of natural gas, oxygen production would be significant. According to Toyota, the Mirai consumes 0.76 kg H2 per 100 km. Using these numbers as a basis, a 200 million vehicle hydrogen fuel cell fleet might consume 23 million tonnes of hydrogen per annum, which when produced by electrolysis would also generate around 180 million tonnes of oxygen, or around one third of the current demand. This of course presumes it can be efficiently captured and transported.

Significant production of oxygen may also benefit another facet of an energy system striving for net-zero emissions. Biomass could be used for power generation, but in an oxygen combustion system (i.e. combusting the biomass with pure oxygen rather than with air which is 79% nitrogen). This means that the waste gas would be mainly carbon dioxide, which in turn would lead to easier capture and storage. This could then be an important negative emission technology in the net-zero sum for the economy as a whole.

The hydrogen economy offers many new opportunities and it is good to see that it is starting to move forward. The Shell hydrogen refueling station that opened in Cobham, uses an on-site electrolyzer to produce its hydrogen, with the electricity coming from a certified green source. It is the first of three hydrogen stations Shell plans to open in the UK in 2017.

The UK 5th Carbon Budget

dchone July 7, 2016

In amongst the excitement created by the Brexit vote, on 30th June 2016 the UK Government met its statutory requirement and announced the details of the 5^th Carbon Budget which covers the period 2028-2032. The Government followed the recommendation of the Climate Change Committee and advised that the carbon budget for the 2028–2032 budgetary period is 1,725,000,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. This assumes 590 MtCO2e covered by the EU ETS and subject to its carbon price and a nontraded share of 1,135 MtCO2e (excluding international shipping emissions). The overall budget represents a reduction of 56.9% below the 1990 baseline.

The UK is unique in the world with its carbon budget approach. This is the result of far reaching legislation enacted back in 2008 in the form of the Climate Change Act which requires the UK Government to establish a specific carbon budget for successive future periods. To date the UK is on track towards meeting the 2^nd Carbon budget, as described in a recently released summary of greenhouse gas emissions which covers the period up to the end of 2014. But the journey has been relatively easy so far. With the continued shift to natural gas and away from coal, the arrival of wind and to a lesser extent solar, the 2008-2009 recession and the higher cost of oil and gas in recent years driving real efficiency and demand reduction, UK emissions have fallen.

In 1990 UK CO2 emissions per kWhr of electricity generation were 672 grams, whereas today they are around 450 grams. As a result, emissions from power generation have fallen, even with current electricity demand higher than the 1990 level. By contrast, road transport emissions have remained about flat for 25 years although there has been a marked shift from gasoline to diesel. Another significant reduction has come from industry, but much of this is due to an overall reduction in heavy industry (steel making, refineries), in favour of services (media and finance) and high technology industry (e.g. aerospace).

With a large natural gas base and a diminished heavy industry sector, has the UK now reached an interim floor in terms of national greenhouse gas emissions? While there are still gains to be made in the electricity sector, future progress towards the goals of the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th Carbon Budgets will require additional action in other parts of the economy.

The 5^th Carbon Budget requires nearly another 200 Mt per annum of reductions across the UK, compared to the 2^nd Carbon Budget period that we are currently in. Even with Hinkley Point nuclear and an ambitious renewables programme (which is reported as being off track http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36710290 ), it is unlikely that power generation emissions would fall more than 100 MT per annum. A 200-250 gram per KWh goal by 2030, equivalent to about 50% natural gas and 50% nuclear/renewables would mean a fall of about 70 Mt. There may also be upward pressure on the sector as transport electrifies.

The above implies that the emission reduction focus will have to expand more rapidly into the transport and residential areas in particular. While the residential sector has been an area of action for some time with a focus on boiler efficiency and home insulation, the rate determining step here is turnover in housing stock or at least housing refurbishment, which can be very slow.

UK transport emissions have hardly budged over many years, although there has been some redistribution within the sector. A sharp single step reduction came during the 2008-2009 recession, but that fall has not been continued. Data since the late 2014 price fall in crude oil is not available yet, but that may put upward pressure on transport emissions. Between now and 2030 there is the opportunity for a single turnover of the vehicle fleet, but EV sales are still only very modest in the UK. In March 2016 there were some 67,000 registered plug-in cars in the UK, less than 0.2% of the fleet. During January to March 2016, some 11,750 new ultra low emission vehicles (ULEVs) were registered in the UK. Over the year to the end of March 2016, ULEVs represented 1.0% of all new registrations, compared with 0.8% over the previous year and 0.2% over the year before that.

The 5^th Carbon Budget represents a further landmark step for the UK, but it also means a shift in policy emphasis is required in the near term.

The Connected Man

dchone April 6, 2016

Back in September 1971, an article appeared in Scientific American on energy use. It remains very current today. Earl Cook was attempting to look at the limits to energy use and how that energy might be provided in a modern society. The article starts with the chart below that shows potential demand from various stages of human development.

Today, we see human society spread right across the chart with substantial parts of the world in one of the versions of Agricultural Man, whilst many of us are in Technological Man. Global energy use stands at some 600 EJ, or about 80 GJ per person per annum whereas in 1971 the number was around 60 GJ. There are significant regional, national and even sub-national differences, with the USA at around 300 GJ and India at 30 GJ as two examples. It is also important to recognise that the Earl Cook chart applies more to the individual archetypes, rather than to national averages. At any point in time, the national average may include people in several categories and the individual demand may not be fully reflected in the national average if imports exceed exports in quantity or carbon intensity or both.

Cook pondered about where this energy might come from and what the limits of supply might be. Although resource constraint was a popular topic at the time (and another article in the same edition of the journal was by peak oil enthusiast M. King Hubbert), Cook concluded that environmental constraints may be more limiting than the resource itself. Although his focus was on more local environmental issues, his overall thinking was close to the mark as society now faces real constraints on emissions of carbon dioxide.

Yet we are far from done in terms of progression from Primitive Man to Technological Man.

Further on, Connected Man, which perhaps didn’t feature in Cook’s 1971 thinking, offers a very different outlook. Such a concept poses a real challenge – will Connected Man use even more energy than Technological Man with the introduction of a new Information category in the bar chart and further expansion within the other categories? Or perhaps Connected Man can break the trend above and bring such efficiency to the other categories that overall energy use per person falls, even as development progresses? That would be unprecedented (N.B. The Connected Man energy numbers are notional and for illustration purposes only).

Connected Man is starting to appear today, with the prospect of 20 billion connected devices comprising the Internet of Things as early as 2020. A trillion connected devices by 2050 would be a reasonable extrapolation from that; it represents less than 15% growth in such devices per annum. It may be much more than this, but the energy demanded by these is unlikely to be trivial, even as efficiency improves.

The real question is what such connectivity offers to the energy system as a whole? Can it also lower the energy use of Industrial Man as well as offering the prospect of leapfrog to a much lower energy demand end state than might have been anticipated for Technological Man? That might have a profound impact on expected global demand later in the century even as we collectively progress to Connected Man. Nevertheless, while 21^st century efficiency will very likely temper eventual energy use per capita, particularly against Cook’s 1970s estimates, the premise of rising energy demand at a global level still stands.

Baselines, metrics and business as usual

dchone April 10, 2015

The submission of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the UNFCCC started in earnest to meet the March 31st agreed date, although many more are still to come. Mexico was the only non-Annex I country (under the Convention) to submit by this date, although the Gabon submission appeared the following day.

A feature of the Mexico submission is the reference to Business as Usual (BAU) as a metric against which to measure progress. Although Mexico is clear on its commendable absolute long term objective, i.e. “. . . . consistent with Mexico´s pathway to reduce 50% of emissions by the year 2050, with respect to the year 2000”, its shorter term progress will be guided by reference to a “Business As Usual scenario of emission projections based on economic growth in the absence of climate change policies, starting from 2013”. The reference to Business As Usual is a factor that we will likely see in many of the upcoming INDC submissions. BAU was also a feature of many Copenhagen pledges, but in several instances the BAU pathway was hard to discern, which made the pledge difficult to understand and rather opaque in terms of actual numbers and therefore effort. This time around numbers will have to be very clear and part of the scrutiny and review process that negotiators are working towards will need to address the credibility and transparency of the BAU reference. In the case of Mexico, the BAU is well documented.

But even when the numbers are published, a BAU reference can make pledges and actions taken appear far more ambitious than may be the case. This is particularly so when energy efficiency is claimed as a major contributor to supposed reductions in emissions. Based on an existing relationship between energy and GDP and assuming a given near-term growth in economic output, it is easy to project what BAU emissions might be in 2020 or 2030 and then argue that a focus on energy efficiency can reduce this, effectively claiming an emissions reduction. This reasoning would appear to show that the country in question is making a large contribution to the global effort and that energy efficiency is an important contributing factor to change, yet in reality the original projection represents a situation that may never have occurred. Business-as-usual also requires improvements in energy efficiency to drive growth, which means that the assumed growth may not have occurred, had the efficiency improvements not helped deliver it. If energy efficiency really is a route to lower emissions, then it needs to pass one clear test, i.e. which known fossil fuel resource will be left in the ground (or a proposed extraction project shelved) because of this? Only then are cumulative emissions potentially impacted.

The Mexico INDC also highlighted a propensity to mix together actions on long lived greenhouse gases such as CO2 and short lived pollutants such as black carbon (very short lived) and methane (short to medium life). Mexico is reasonably transparent here as well, although its highest level number aggregates the two, i.e. “Mexico is committed to reduce unconditionally 25% of its Greenhouse Gases and Short Lived Climate Pollutants emissions (below BAU) for the year 2030”. The problem is that although carbon dioxide and black carbon (which is the major focus in Mexico) both contribute to warming of the climate system, they behave very differently in the atmosphere and mitigation leads to different outcomes which are not interchangeable.

Black carbon remains in the atmosphere for only days or weeks, which means it strongly impacts the rate of warming today but has little impact on the global goal to limit overall warming of the climate system to 2°C, unless of course there is still an unacceptable level of black carbon in the atmosphere at a time in the future when warming is approaching its peak. By contrast, carbon dioxide remains for hundreds to thousands of years and largely sets the thermostat of the future climate. Solving the black carbon problem today would deliver tangible near term benefits on a number of fronts, but unless carbon dioxide mitigation also takes place the long term outcome will hardly shift.

Mexico has set the bar quite high with its clear and well-structured contribution, but the metrics and baseline used highlight issues that the UNFCCC may need to deal with over the coming months as it begins to assess the merit of all the national contributions.

Did the UN Summit shift the dial?

dchone September 25, 2014

The UN Climate Summit has come and gone and leaders from many countries have made announcements, pledges or at least offered moral support. But are we any better off as a result? Reflecting on the last few days of meetings, events, panels and speeches in New York, I would have to argue for the “yes” case. As such, it contributes another piece to the Paris jigsaw.

Although nothing that was formally pledged or offered is likely to make a tangible difference to global emissions in the medium term, one subject has resurfaced in a major way that can: carbon pricing. While there was still a focus on efficiency and renewable energy at many events, the need to implement policy to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions came through loud and clear. In recent months this has been led by the World Bank and they were able to announce in New York that 73 countries and some 1000 companies have signed their Statement, Putting a Price on Carbon, which is an extraordinary result for just a few months of concerted effort.

Given that this was a UN event rather than a national event, the focus naturally shifted to the global story, with an emphasis on how the Paris 2015 agreement might accelerate the shift to carbon pricing and a carbon market that operated globally. The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) held a number of events around the city outlining its ideas on how this might happen.

Its kickoff was an event on Monday afternoon, the day before the Summit, where a team led by Professor Rob Stavins of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University presented new work on linking various carbon emission mitigation approaches. The work suggests that such linkage could be the foundation mechanism behind a globally networked carbon market and can be found in summary here. It illustrates how even quite different approaches to mitigation might link and then deliver the economic benefits associated with a larger more liquid market.

But if this approach is to be adopted, the big question that would still need to be addressed is how the Paris agreement might actually facilitate it. IETA offered some thinking on is, with an outline proposal that even included some basic treaty text to enable such a process. Given that the 2015 agreement will almost certainly be structured around INDCs, or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, the text proposal needed to embrace this concept and work with it, rather than attempting to impose a carbon price or carbon market structure by diktat. The basic reason for trading in a market is to exchange goods or services and optimise revenue and / or lower costs as a result, so the text simply suggested that parties (nations) could be offered the ability to exchange and transfer mitigation effort (INDCs) should they (or companies within their economies) wish to do so, but requires that it be recorded in some form of carbon reduction unit. The proposal by IETA is as follows;

Cooperation between Parties in realizing their Contribution

Parties may voluntarily cooperate in achieving their mitigation contributions.
A unified international transfer system is hereby established.

a. A Party may transfer portions of its defined national contribution to one or more other Parties through carbon units of its choice.
b. Transfers and receipts of units shall be recorded in equivalent carbon reduction terms.

There could be many variations on this theme, but the idea is to establish the ability to trade and require a carbon unit accounting of it if and when it takes place. Of course many COP decisions will be required in years to come to fully flush this out.

What was interesting about this proposal was the reaction it got from those closer to the negotiating process. Rather than simply acknowledging it, one meeting in New York saw several people debating the wording as if the formal negotiation was underway. I understand that this was exactly the reaction IETA were looking for and hopefully it bodes well for the development of market mechanisms within the Paris outcome.

There were of course other themes running through the various events. The new business coalition, We Mean Business, was actively marketing its new report which attempts to make the case that emission reduction strategies in the business sector can deliver returns on investment approaching 30%. This is a rather misleading claim in that it is primarily focussing on efficiency improvements in certain sectors, which of course factors in the local cost of energy, but particularly electricity. There is no doubt that reducing electricity consumption can lead to improved competitiveness and growth, hence a very attractive ROI, but this is very different to a real reduction in emissions that actually delivers benefits globally. This is a major theme of my recent book. The problem with such claims is that they shift attention away from the much more difficult task of actually reducing emissions to the extent that cumulative atmospheric carbon dioxide is impacted; such reductions require real heavy lifting as delivered through the use of carbon capture and storage.

Overall, It was an interesting week, framed by 300,000 demonstrators on Sunday and a plethora of world leaders speaking at the UN on Tuesday. Just maybe, this was the start of something meaningful.