2010 Diary week 51
Global warming, climate change and weather extremes
Book Review
Part 4 of the review of Hell and High Water: Global Warming – the Solution and the Politics – and What We Should Do by Joseph J. Romm is below. Here are a few snippets: “The biggest climate threat in the power sector comes from traditional coal plants because coal contains more carbon than any other fossil fuel, and a typical coal plant converts only about one-third of the energy in the coal to electricity. The rest is wasted.” “As of 2002, we had nearly 1,000 gigawatts (GW) of coal plants worldwide, which was about 40% of total global electricity generation. A typical large coal plant is about one gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts (MW), in size. By 2030, the world is projected to double that to 2,000 GW of coal electricity. More than a third of the new coal plants are expected to be built in China, but one in six will be in the United States.” “ Our top two priorities in energy policy should be to minimize the need for new coal-fired power and to free up inefficiently used natural gas for high-efficiency power generation. Energy efficiency remains by far the single most cost-effective strategy for achieving these goals, for minimizing carbon dioxide emissions into the air.” “Companies tend to be more aggressive about efficiency when there are comprehensive government programs helping them.” “The total energy wasted by U.S. power generators each year equals the total energy Japan uses each year.” “By generating electricity and capturing the waste heat in a co-generation system, much energy and pollution can be saved. Overall system efficiencies can exceed 80%. Total greenhouse gas emissions can be cut in half.” “A major focus should be on more efficient use of steam, which is crucial for production in energy-intensive industries such as chemicals, food products, plastics, primary metals, pulp and paper, textiles, and petroleum refining. Steam accounts for $24 billion a year of U.S. manufacturing energy costs and 40% of U.S. industrial carbon dioxide emissions.”
GLOBAL WARMING – THE SOLUTION AND THE POLITICS – AND WHAT WE SHOULD DO
JOSEPH J. ROMM
WILLIAM MORROW 2007
PART IV
Chapter 7: The Electrifying Solution
This analysis suggest that the United States could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 10% and 40% of the 1990 level at very low cost. Some reductions may even be a net savings if the proper policies are implemented.
U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 1991
• This chapter examines the solutions for the power sector. Amazingly, with the right technology strategy over the next two decades, we could cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by two-thirds without increasing the total electric bill of either consumers or businesses.
• In previous chapters I have touched on a number of aggressive low-carbon strategies or ‘wedges’ we need to achieve over the next five decades to stabilize concentrations below a doubling. Each wedge ultimately avoids the emission of 1 billion metric tons of carbon a year.
• These are the ones aimed at reducing emissions from electricity and heavy industry:
1. Launch a massive performance-based efficiency program for homes, commercial buildings, and new construction.
2. Launch a massive effort to boost the efficiency of heavy industry and expand the use of cogeneration (combined heat and power).
3. Capture the carbon dioxide from 800 new large coal plants and store it underground.
4. Build 1 million large wind turbines (or the equivalent in renewables such as solar power).
5. Build 700 new large nuclear power plants while shutting down no old ones.
• The biggest climate threat in the power sector comes from traditional coal plants because coal contains more carbon than any other fossil fuel, and a typical coal plant converts only about one-third of the energy in the coal to electricity. The rest is wasted.
• As of 2002, we had nearly 1,000 gigawatts (GW) of coal plants worldwide, which was about 40% of total global electricity generation. A typical large coal plant is about one gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts (MW), in size. By 2030, the world is projected to double that to 2,000 GW of coal electricity.
• More than a third of the new coal plants are expected to be built in China, but one in six will be in the United States.
• Natural-gas plants are far more efficient and less polluting than coal plants, but high prices for natural gas have made them much more expensive to operate than coal plants.
• The coal plants that will be built from 2005 to 2030 will release as much carbon dioxide as all of the coal burned since the industrial revolution more than two centuries ago.
• On this emissions trajectory, the world would be emitting 10.5 billion metric tons of carbon (38 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide) in 2030.
• To stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below a doubling of what they were in preindustrial times, we need to keep average annual emissions to only 7 billion metric tons this century.
• So if we build these plants we need to shut them down within two decades. Considering the present capital investment of more than $1 trillion, that doesn’t seem likely.
• The only alternative in 2030 would be to retrofit the plants to capture and store the carbon dioxide they release. But virtually all of the planned coal plants are unsuitable for such retrofits.
Carbon capture and storage
• To permanently store carbon, to keep it out of our atmosphere forever, the carbon dioxide from all power plants must be removed and stored somewhere forever.
• The total extra costs for this process are quite high, $30 to $80 a ton of carbon dioxide and vendors do no have an adequate economic incentive in the absence of clear regulatory direction.
• The largest potential physical reservoir is the deep oceans, with serious environmental risk.
• Research is focusing on pumping highly compressed liquid carbon dioxide, called supercritical CO2, into huge geological formations, such as deep underground aquifers, with the danger of leakage.
• Each potential site will need intensive monitoring to guarantee it can store carbon dioxide with no leaks. The geologic stability of storage sites is important because an earthquake could release massive amounts of carbon dioxide.
• After spending billions of dollars and conducting more than two decades of scientific study, we have identified only one site in this country as a safe, permanent repository for nuclear waste – Yucca Mountain in Nevada – and even in that case, we have been unable to achieve the consensus needed to start storing waste in it.
• Analysis suggests carbon capture and storage could eventually eliminate much of U.S. electric-sector coal emissions for between $20 and $40 a ton of carbon dioxide. In the meantime we must avoid building traditional coal plants. The best strategy for that is certainly energy efficiency.
The technology strategy what will work
• Our top two priorities in energy policy should be to minimize the need for new coal-fired power and to free up inefficiently used natural gas for high-efficiency power generation.
• Energy efficiency remains by far the single most cost-effective strategy for achieving these goals, for minimizing carbon dioxide emissions into the air.
• Most buildings and factories can cut electricity consumption by more than 25% right now with rapid payback (under four years).
• Many companies that have pursued efficiency have found gains in productivity, because better-designed buildings improve office-worker productivity and redesigned industrial processes typically also reduce waste and increase output.
• Companies tend to be more aggressive about efficiency when there are comprehensive government programs helping them.
• The most cost-effective strategy would be to replicate, nationally and globally, California’s energy-efficiency programs and standards for homes and commercial buildings.
• From 1976 to 2005, electricity consumption per capita grew 60% in the rest of the nation, while it stayed flat in high-tech, fast-growing California.
• Most utilities can make money only by selling more power. California changed the regulations so that utilities’ profits are not tied to how much electricity they sell. It has also allowed utilities to take a share of any energy savings they help consumers and businesses achieve.
• Efficiency strategies today include energy audits, outreach and education, training, technical assistance and rebates for purchasing energy-efficient products.
• The state’s efficiency efforts have lowered the energy bill of Californians by $12 billion a year, which comes to $1,000 per family. It is avoiding the emissions of more than 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year.
Natural-gas efficiency
• About 58% of the world’s natural-gas reserves are in Iran, Russia, and Qatar. As with electricity, most buildings and factories can cut natural-gas consumption by more than 25% right now with rapid payback (under four years), after which the savings become profits forever.
• A major focus should be on more efficient use of steam, which is crucial for production in energy-intensive industries such as chemicals, food products, plastics, primary metals, pulp and paper, textiles, and petroleum refining.
• Steam accounts for $24 billion a year of U.S. manufacturing energy costs and 40% of U.S. industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
• The energy-intensive industries are not only major consumers of natural gas, they account for 80% of energy consumed by U.S. manufacturers and 90%of the hazardous waste. They represent the best chance for increasing efficiency while cutting pollution. Many are major emitters of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide.
• For these reasons, in the 1990s, the Energy Department began forming partnerships with energy-intensive industries to develop clean technologies. We worked with scientists and engineers to identify areas of joint research into technologies that would simultaneously save energy, reduce pollution, and increase productivity.
• An important companion strategy to natural-gas efficiency would be a major national effort to encourage the simultaneous generation of both electricity and heat, called cogeneration, or combined heat and power. Cogen provides large opportunities to save both energy and carbon dioxide.
• Fossil fuels burned at large central-station power plants generate most of the electricity used by U.S. companies. These plants are typically quite inefficient, converting only about one-third of the energy in fossil fuels into electricity.
• The waste heat generated by that combustion is literally thrown away, and then more energy is lost transmitting the electricity from the power plant to the factory or building.
• The total energy wasted by U.S. power generators each year equals the total energy Japan uses each year.
• More fossil fuels are then burned in our buildings and factories to provide heat, hot water, and steam. The average boiler converts only about two-thirds of its fossil fuels to useful heat or steam.
• By generating electricity and capturing the waste heat in a co-generation system, much energy and pollution can be saved. Overall system efficiencies can exceed 80%. Total greenhouse gas emissions can be cut in half.
• A 2000 study for the DOE found that the market potential for combined heat and power at commercial and institutional facilities alone was 75,000 megawatts, about one-tenth of current U.S. power-generation capacity. The remaining potential in the industrial sector is about 88,000 megawatts.
• Cogen and other on-site power systems, such as solar panels, are called distributed energy as opposed to large central-station power plants like coal or nuclear.
The renewables revolution
• Energy efficiency cannot stop the runaway growth of electricity demand. Renewable energy can deliver electricity without any carbon emissions. Wind and solar energy were the two fastest-growing forms of power in the past two decades. Wind is the renewable that can meet the most large-scale demand at the lowest price.
• Modern wind turbines convert kinetic energy of the wind into electricity. Wind turbines are often grouped together into ‘farms’ to generate bulk electrical power.
• America has exceptional wind resources, especially the central United States from the Texas Panhandle up through the central Plains. North Dakota alone has enough energy from high-wind resources to supply 36% of the electricity of the lower 48 states.
• If wind were to become a significant portion of the generation mix, additional investments in transmission and distribution infrastructure would be needed.
• New, utility-scale wind projects are being built today, delivering electricity at prices as low as 4 cents per kilowatt-hour in the best wind sites. The next generation wind turbine is projected to bring costs down to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour (including the wind-production tax credit.)
• Since wind is an intermittent electricity generator and does not provide power on an as-needed basis, it loses some value on a per-kilowatt-hour basis, compared with traditional generation that can provide steady base-load power.
• While wind now provides less than 1% of U.S. electricity generation, it represents up to 40% of electricity in regions of Germany, Spain, and Denmark.
• A 2004 report by the International Energy Agency concluded: “Under the best conditions – optimised system design, site and resource availability – electricity from biomass, small hydropower, wind and geothermal plants can produce electricity at costs ranging from 2-5 cents/kilowatt-hour.”
• Geothermal power converts the earth’s deep energy into heat and electricity. It remains a very attractive power source.
• Renewable-energy power plants typically have high capital costs, but their operating costs are low, because they don’t consume fuel on a daily basis. While most forms of renewable energy are not competitive with current wholesale electricity prices, it is well to remember that:
1. Many traditional power plants have long since paid off their capital costs, so that their electricity cost comes only from fuel and operating costs. New fossil fuel power plants don’t have that advantage.
2. Many renewables have not yet achieved the ultimate cost reduction from either improvements in technology or manufacturing economies of scale at higher volume.
3. Carbon dioxide emissions have no economic cost to the producer and are never counted in the comparison of true energy costs.
• New renewables will be increasingly competitive with new fossil fuel plants, especially when we properly account for the real cost of global-warming emissions, which, as we have seen, threatens to bring about almost incalculable damage to the next 50 generations of Americans.
• The EU has set a target of having 21% of its electricity come from renewables by 2010. A standard requiring 20% of U.S. electricity to be renewable by 2020 has very little net cost to the country, but brings the huge benefit of reducing future natural-gas prices and future greenhouse gas emissions.
• Under such a standard, electricity prices would be lower in 2020 than they are today, according to a 2001 Department of Energy study.
Power switch
• In 2003 I coauthored a study on “The Path to Carbon-Dioxide-Free Power,” which focused on the three technology areas I have been discussing: energy efficiency, cogeneration, and renewables.
• The results were very promising. They showed that with a set of innovative and ambitious policies the U.S. electricity sector could cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2020.
• The price of carbon dioxide never exceeds about $15 a ton ($55 a ton of carbon), which translates into slightly more than 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour added to the cost of a traditional coal plant.
• The net savings would be about $20 billion per year from 2004 to 2020 and would exceed $80 billion a year after 2020.
• As an added benefit, Americans would see a sharp decline in air pollution and a resulting improvement in health.
• Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming, a 1991 study by the national Academy of Sciences, concluded, “This analysis suggests that the United States could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 10% and 40% of the 1990 level and at very low cost. Some reductions may even be a net savings if the proper policies are implemented.”
• If we do nothing for the next two decades, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions will rise another 20% or more, and we will have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in another generation of inefficient and carbon-intensive technologies and power plants.
• Having worked with dozens of companies to design profitable emissions-reduction strategies, and having carefully reviewed more than 100 specific case studies of buildings and factories that employed energy efficiency, cogeneration, and renewable energy, I have no doubt that the United States could dramatically reduce its carbon emissions per kilowatt-hour without raising its overall energy bill.
• Consider California. In 2004 the state consumed about 7,000 kilowatt-hours per person, whereas the rest of the country consumed about 13,000 kWh per person. California’ electricity rates (cents per kWh) are about 50% higher than the national average, yet its annual electric bill per person is about the same as the rest of the nation because it wastes less electricity.
• Its rates are higher partly because California is paying for the legacy of its flawed deregulation in the 1990s, and that portion of the extra rate should decrease over time. Its rates are also higher because it has much cleaner power generation, using more renewables and natural gas than the rest of the country.
• Each kilowatt-hour consumed in California generates only about half the carbon dioxide emissions of the national average. The average Californian generates under one-third of the carbon dioxide emissions of the average American while paying the same annual bill.