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Emission Impossible: Meaningful Atmospheric CO2 Reductions
According to Roger Pielke Jr on his Prometheus blog, World Energy Outlook 2008 has been released by the IEA.
Cutting to the chase, can atmospheric CO2 be stabilised at 450 ppmv using existing technology? The IEA says NO:
“The scale of the challenge in the 450 Policy Scenario is immense: the 2030 emissions level for the world as a whole in this scenario is less than the level of projected emissions for non-OECD countries alone in the Reference Scenario. In other words, the OECD countries alone cannot put the world onto the path to 450-ppm trajectory, even if they were to reduce their emissions to zero. Even leaving aside any debate about the political feasibility of the 450 Policy Scenario, it is uncertain whether the scale of the transformation envisaged is even technically achievable, as the scenario assumes broad deployment of technologies that have not yet been proven. The technology shift, if achievable, would certainly be unprecedented in scale and speed of deployment. Increased public and private spending on research and development in the near term would be essential to develop the advanced technologies needed to make the 450 Policy Scenario a reality.”
If every new power plant built from today onwards were to emit zero CO2, the impact on future emissions growth would be small:
“The rate of capital-stock turnover is particularly slow in the power sector, where large up-front costs and long operating lifetimes mean that plants that have already been built — and their associated emissions — are effectively “locked-in”. In the Reference Scenario, three-quarters of the projected output of electricity worldwide in 2020 (and more than half in 2030) comes from power stations that are already operating today. As a result, even if all power plants built from now onwards were carbon-free, CO2 emissions from the power sector would still be only 25%, or 4 Gt, lower in 2020 relative to the Reference Scenario.”
Read the Executive Summary of the IEA World Energy Outlook 2008 here.
Climate Research News maintains that current climate policy is indeed emission impossible and will not have any measurable effect on climate even if successful at reducing CO2 emissions. Climate policy should therefore be separated from energy policy as a matter of urgency.
UPDATE
See related post on Prometheus: ‘Understating the Mitigation Challenge, IEA 2008′
Today I’d like to illustrate how the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, published yesterday, also dramatically underestimates the magnitude of the mitigation challenge…………..
November 13th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Not having much luck trying to get the world to return to the stone age ruled by elite jet setters.
Our county just set a local forest fire, said it was for maintaining the underbrush to protect the public. Covered our county of about 6000 square miles for the last three days with smoke, soot and ash. Dare I say that forest fires and volcanoes might the bigger problem than man’s puny emissions of a gas that plants love and can’t live without. Matter of fact, neither can man.
A neat site to track forest fires worldwide is called “fire mapper” … http://firefly.geog.umd.edu/firemap/ … It may astound you how many forest fires show in this mashup of different web data sources.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:35 am
Paul,
Maybe you would like to change Roger Pielke Sr into Roger Pielke Jr in the first sentence. Please feel free to delete this comment.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:57 am
Oops! Thanks – I did suspect I had done that, but hadn’t got around to checking. Now fixed.