Gregor Macdonald asks the following question:The United States is the second largest consumer of coal in the world. Sitting just behind China, but ahead of India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, and Germany, the US consumes about 560 mtoe of coal each year. (million tons oil equivalent). US coal consumption has been largely flat the past 10 years, as the rest of the world has raced ahead. In 2008, the most recent year for available global coal use data, total world consumption of coal reached 3303.7 mtoe. Thus, the US accounted for nearly 17.00% of total world coal use. Within the US, coal accounts for nearly half (48.7% ) of all power generation. To give up coal completely would be impossibility but let’s imagine for a moment such a circumstance. Question: if the United States stopped using coal today, given current coal consumption trends, how many years would need to pass before the rest of the world (ROW) replaced the lost consumption from the US?Here is his answer, based on the graphs that he presents above:
Based on current trends, and using a conservative 4.00% annual growth rate in global coal consumption (when in truth it is currently closer to 4.7 -5.00%), I project that the world could replace 100% of lost US demand in 5 years. The force behind this trend of course is not the 2 billion people in the developed world, but the nearly 5 billion people in the developing world.These numbers suggest that the driving issue behind what is called "climate policy" is really "energy policy." Further, the challenge is not, as many in the rich world would have things, simply about stabilizing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but doing so while simultaneously and dramatically expanding energy supply around the world, especially among the 5 billion people in what are often called "developing countries." The world faces an energy challenge of enormous magnitude. Climate policy discussions too often ignore or minimize the energy challenge.
(H/T FT Energy Source)
9 comments:
By the way, a lovely chart, up there with your airports one.
Roger, I'm either ahead of my time, well behind it, or from a different planet, but it has never occurred to me that 'controlling' CO2 emissions, climate policy, had anything to do with anything other than energy.
Did you blog on the coal power station in South Africa http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/08/AR2010040805407.html , a lovely example of (cheap coal) power for the less developed world being resisted by FoE http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/world_bank_approves_south_african_power_station_08042010.html
Which kind of says it all. Sorry, I don't know how to embed links in Firefox.
-1-Roddy
Yes, see:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/04/world-bank-financing-of-south-africas.html
Pick up Mike Hulme's book, for many people energy is not a primary reason for climate policy!
People can agree to a common energy/environmental goal- however the implementation MUST trigger public versus private solutions and public versus private rights disputes. The very early environmental advocates were already breaking down along the lines of socialist and private property advocates (ex Bob Marshall vs Ding Darling) The 1960s saw the rise of the environment as the stage to argue capitalism and equity. By the 1980s the environment was already being consolidated into an environmental justice movement. Climate change is an openly admitted as a tool for social justice.
Two or more variables cannot be simultaneously maximized. So what is the goal of energy policy and climate change? Are we maximizing for the environment, energy or equity? Your post frames the action needed as both reforming energy production AND equitable distribution of that energy. Where are your tradeoffs? Do we limit total energy production to increase equity- how do we define equity- how much growth do we allow or should be allowed, who gets to say- etc etc. And millions of other people are sorting their own rankings.
Energy policy is a function of how much energy do we allow, who gets it, for what uses, who pays, what risks, who controls it, what we can want and have, equity and responsibility, private vs public, winners and losers. Basically energy policy decides who and what we are, will be and can want to be. Energy is the ultimate proxy.
Roger - 3 - thanks, I'll look at the Hulme book. I didn't word what I wrote very carefully, and I do take your point, which crudely put in exaggerated Anglo-Saxon is that for CO2 emissions to be controlled some developing nation child somewhere isn't going to learn to read because he hasn't got light to learn by, or may die due to lack of medical care infrastructure, because we've agreed they shouldn't build a power station. Trade that off, FoE.
It's an area I'm interested in, African electricity. A friend of mine seems to power half of sub-Saharan Africa. I would guess he's 'delighted' with climate policy. Why? Because even less chance of these countries actually getting a loan to build a power station and a grid. So he remains needed.
OT – Der Spiegel has released a secret recording of the showdown at the Copenhagen Climate Summit
The Copenhagen Protocol
How did negotiations really go on for the world climate summit in Copenhagen? Secret recordings reveal how China and India prevented an agreement during the crucial meeting of the Heads of State. Powerless Europeans had to watch the negotiations fail.
The Video (in german) can be watched here.
I prepared a subtitled version (Youtube):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvpHOBAIyps
Since I had quite some trouble catching all the words, especially from the chinese representative, please feel free editing the subtitles on the Dotsub page.
I'll play devils advocate.
The cost of shipping coal from Gillette,Wyoming to China or India already exceeds the threshold cost for nuclear power.
We end up with the same problem we have with feeding starving children in Africa, it's not the cost of the food that is the problem, it's the cost of the shipping.
The Chinese don't have internal political opposition to nuclear power to contend with.
They would simply continue with their plans to expand nuclear power at the maximum rate the nuclear power industry can handle.
Personally, I think the graph would have just as much impact but be less melodramatic if the baseline were at 0 rather than 700. It shows that coal use has doubled in the last decade — which is a lot. There's no need to give the impression of claiming it's quadrupled.
I am with Harrywr2 on this - seeing long lines of coal cars regularly leaving our part of the country- if the US got off coal you would have to know 1) the availability of coal in other countries, 2) likely prices and 3)comparable prices of coal substitutes to figure out if people elsewhere would use more coal.
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