September 27, 2014 – President Obama is counting on replacing coal-fired power with cleaner burning natural gas. But the shift according to researchers at University of California Irvine will do little to reduce carbon emissions.
The current statistics on coal-fired power in the U.S. hover around 40%, down from near 50% just a few years ago. The plants that have closed were reaching end of life. Future closures are being driven by the U.S. EPA directive targeting coal.
Why has the President focused on substituting natural gas for coal? Because the former when used to generate electricity emits 60% less CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced. And because shale gas is in great supply from domestic fracking operations.
The UC Irvine study involving researchers from Stanford and the organization Near Zero, published their findings on September 24, 2014, in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
What they found is that the use of natural gas as a bridging fuel to lower carbon emissions is not an effective means of achieving the desired end result. That without an effective carbon reduction and green renewable energy target as part of a national climate change policy, natural gas would actually increase electricity demand and more than offset the benefits gained from substituting it for coal.
Christine Shearer, UC Irvine, states, “Natural gas has been presented as a bridge to a low-carbon future, but what we see is that it’s actually a major detour……the only effective paths to reducing greenhouse gases are a regulatory cap or a carbon tax.”
The authors of the study were not concerned about wellhead methane leaks at natural gas production sites and their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Instead they focused on the abundance of supply causing a delay in moving faster to renewable energy sources, “delays up to decades the time period over which renewable energies become economically competitive.”
And further they looked at the price of energy in an economy where natural gas was abundant and relatively cheap. Under such conditions, which appear to be the way the U.S. and other shale gas producing nations are going, energy usage per capita would grow, dis-inhibiting energy conservation efforts and further impeding carbon reductions. In fact the net carbon reduction would be minimal to non-existent. The only moving away from coal scenario that met 2050 carbon reduction goals is one where renewable energy ramped up to 50% of total production capacity.
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((What they found is that the use of natural gas as a bridging fuel to lower carbon emissions is not an effective means of achieving the desired end result. That without an effective carbon reduction and green renewable energy target as part of a national climate change policy, natural gas would actually increase electricity demand and more than offset the benefits gained from substituting it for coal.
Christine Shearer, UC Irvine, states, “Natural gas has been presented as a bridge to a low-carbon future, but what we see is that it’s actually a major detour……the only effective paths to reducing greenhouse gases are a regulatory cap or a carbon tax.”))
Suppose you were the US President and your top science and technology advisors, (presumably the world’s most competent) both classified military and civilian DOE program managers, tell you, “Somewhere around 2030 several different practical and cheap carbon-free energy technologies will become developed. Economical fusion power plants will be implemented, cheap high-power-density batteries will be available, as will cheap high-power-density hydrogen and NG fuel cells. The Silex laser enrichment process actually works, and can reduce fission reactor fuel costs by 80%, making safer and more compact robot operated fission reactor designs feasible. Robot-built and operated thorium fuel cycle reactors and also traveling wave fission power plants will be feasible. Our US Navy has discovered a secret energy-from-vacuum technology and NASA has discovered a secret anti-gravity energy source. While we can’t begin to implement a nearly carbon free energy economy before 2030, we have complete confidence that after 2030 this can come to pass through any one or all of the technologies we mentioned. If the US, Canada, and Europe has no carbon-reduction policy at all, atmospheric carbon levels in 2035 will be in the range of 550 to 600 ppm. Thereafter, global population and atmospheric carbon levels will stabilize and begin to decline as more economical carbon–free energy technologies are deployed and replace major carbon emitters. On the other hand, all attempts to regulate carbon through government mandates will retard productivity in the developed world, hamper the rate of conversion to carbon-free energy, diminish quality of life, and prolong the miseries of the developing world, yet regulation attempts are unlikely to hold atmospheric carbon levels in 2035 below 550 ppm. If the goal is to reduce atmospheric carbon in 2035, more rapid development and implementation of technologies, particularly AI robotics, that enable carbon-free energy will produce better results than any other path.”
What would your carbon policy be?
One might fairly object that many of the mentioned technologies are unproven, fantasy, or impossible. I wouldn’t argue with that. But some of the technologies are certainly possible, and competent human-level-intelligence robotic systems will definitely be here by 2035. Eliminating the corruptible “human factor” from uranium enrichment processes, fission power plant design and operation, and fuel reprocessing and waste storage, eliminates proliferation concerns and allows much more cost effective designs than human operated designs.
Executive Summary: “The robots are definitely coming and economical carbon-free energy sources will be implemented globally in the 2030s, but not much before then. Doing nothing at all about carbon emissions before the 2030s will result in 2035 atmospheric CO2 levels in the range of 600 ppm. Drastic government programs to reduce emissions will result in 2035 atmospheric carbon levels in the range of 550-600 ppm. After 2035 the drastic government program policy path will fail to arrest CO2 build-up as rapidly as the “do nothing” policy path.
One should be cautious about CO2 levels and associating decline with stability. The current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will have consequences for centuries if not millennia. Higher levels – greater consequences over a longer duration. Of course we may invent a series of CO2 mitigation technologies that remove the gas from the atmosphere and thus shorten the period of atmospheric warming we have instigated.