One recent study pegged that a maximum warming response from an emission source takes between 6.6 and 30.7 years.
If true, it means the consequences of emitting CO2 or CH4 can be measured in the short term, and fully felt in terms of atmospheric warming within the generation responsible for it. This means that tracing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to an emitter should be possible for legal purposes. It also means that the emissions window is very short in terms of doing measurable climate change damage. Finally, for those seeking climate change mitigation, it means global warming counter strategies can be implemented much faster and achieve near-immediate results.
A case example is worth considering. When a coal-burning thermal power plant emits CO2 and other GHGs, the local increase in atmospheric levels is abrupt. Then the GHGs get diffused with carbon gasses getting absorbed by local forests, soil, the nearby ocean and any other natural carbon sinks within the vicinity. That means the immediate spike in GHGs slowly declines. The warming caused by the increased GHGs and their radiative forcing is, as a result, delayed. But natural carbon sinks can only absorb carbon emissions for so long. Even the ocean, the largest carbon sink on the planet, has its limits.
Another factor to consider is the size of the GHG emission pulse coming from that plant or factory. The larger the amount of GHGs, the slower the uptake by natural carbon sinks. That means the bigger the GHG radiative forcing on the atmosphere which, of course, knows no boundaries. That means the GHG radiative contribution gets distributed across the globe, further complicating the ability to measure single sources of these emissions and their cumulative impact over time.
One thing, however, is certain. When a power plant, factory, oil refinery, or other polluting source adds GHGs to the atmosphere, the warming effect can be quick, something not fully described in the literature looking at anthropogenic causes for global warming.
One study I looked at calculated that 93% of peak warming from a new emission source can be realized in 10 years. Does that mean an immediate GHG emissions reduction can determine within a very small time window, the future level of atmospheric warming? If so, then the emission reductions we do today can immediately benefit the planet in decades, not centuries.
If we were to implement carbon capture technology to the maximum, could we reverse global warming? According to a study done by Wood Mackenzie, to stop temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) we would need to capture 7 billion tons of CO2 and other GHGs per year going forward. But current and planned carbon capture technology, if everything gets built, doesn’t come close to that number. The planned global carbon capture capacity on the books amounts to 1.4 billion tons sequestered annually, a far cry from 7 billion, and likely to see global atmospheric temperatures 2.5 Celsius (4.5 Fahrenheit) higher than today by 2050.
At the upcoming COP28, in the United Arab Emirates, the United Nations annual gathering will include a great deal of discussion by fossil fuel companies about their commitment to implementing carbon removal technologies. Their credibility should be questioned considering the number of carbon capture projects partially funded by local government partners that these companies have abandoned in the past.
In Canada, the Pathways Alliance represents a partnership of major oil sands producers who express a commitment to reach net-zero GHG emissions from operations through carbon capture and storage. The Pathways fact sheets describe capturing CO2 from more than 20 oil sands facilities and transporting it over a 400-kilometre (almost 250-mile) pipeline to deposit it in a geologically stable underground formation where it will be permanently sequestered.
How much have the partners spent on the project so far? As of March of this year, about $10 million. How much do they estimate the project will cost? $16.5 billion which is not small change. So how much are the partners committed to putting their money into the project? It looks like about $7.6 billion or 46% of the total cost. Where is the rest of the money to come from? Government. If true to form as we have seen in many past carbon capture projects, will the partners bail as the costs mount well beyond project estimates? My guess is highly likely.
And should the Pathways Alliance complete the project, how many tons of GHGs will be removed annually? Around 12 million tons in total. Compare that to the 70 million tons the current oil sands projects produce annually and it amounts to a mere 17.1% of the total.
]]>“Is climate change about fossil fuels or emissions?”
My response initially was “it’s about both.”
She continued:
“Isn’t it the emissions that are the cause of climate change?”
I responded “Yes.”
She then said the following:
“The world is energy-hungry and right now much of the energy we consume comes from fossil fuels. So if we could separate fossil fuels from the emissions issue, wouldn’t that be a desirable outcome?”
My response was “Absolutely but how can we separate the two?”
This is a tough question to solve because the primary source of global-warming emissions is human activity that generates greenhouse gasses (GHGs). It’s these GHGs that is our problem and the principal purpose of government climate policies to date has been to try to stop adding them to the atmosphere. At the same time, the global economy that provides jobs, food, shelter and other primary needs craves the energy that comes from the fossil fuels that produce the GHGs. So separating the two isn’t easy. And doing so is something we have never considered until global warming became a thing in the late 20th century. Up until then, our progress was measured by the continuous rise in the gross domestic product (GDP), a monetary measure of human economic success. In the face of the worst outcomes that our planet is currently and in future will deliver, a rethinking of how we measure success is long overdue.
Getting back to my conversation with my friend from the energy industry, in answer to my previous question she stated: “It’s a conundrum,” and then went on “but we must find ways to protect industry jobs, the economies of nations, and the environment.”
When you examine the problem there are two solutions:
These two can be categorized as mitigation actions. Solutions include:
As a pragmatist, I recognize that fixating on ending the fossil fuel industry is impractical and economically a high-risk move. But as an environmentalist and futurist, ending GHG emissions is our only route forward to ensure that my grandchild and those who follow her will inherit a world not subject to the extremes that atmospheric warming will bring. The emission reduction actions we take now both as environmentalists and as those working in the energy sector will make the difference in terms of leaving a habitable versus inhabitable world on many parts of this planet.
What defines uninhabitable? Here’s a sample of last summer’s high temperatures across the planet. All of them are numbers never previously seen at the locations mentioned. Why are these numbers happening? The rise in GHGs in the atmosphere. Four exceed the halfway mark to the boiling point of water.
That’s why addressing emissions whether you are an environmentalist or working in the energy industry is so important. Through mitigation associated with the four actions described above, we can keep from becoming the proverbial frog oblivious to the warming pot of water in which it sits.
]]>Socioeconomic factors include economic growth, population and other demographic factors (rural-to-urban migration for example), adoption of new technologies, and voluntary and government policy directed lifestyle changes.
The methodology for the study used the Asia-Pacific Integrated Model/Computed General Equilibrium, widely adopted by researchers for studying climate mitigation and impact assessment. The model covers 17 regions of the planet, and 42 business classifications detailing the energy, industrial, agricultural, forestry, and waste management sectors. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrogen dioxide (N2O) and fluorinated gases contributed from all these sources were calculated.
In the model, the researchers applied a carbon tax beginning from 2011 as a mitigation strategy to attempt to reduce GHG emissions in all business classification areas. The model used to end targets in its analysis:
Among the socioeconomic factors seen as mitigating carbon emissions were dietary changes to low-meat consumption, seen as important in achieving a lower mean temperature rise.
The use of biomass as an energy source alternative to fossil fuels was seen as a strong mitigating factor. And when combined with CCS it was seen as a method to achieve negative carbon emissions.
The study noted that negative emission initiatives would dramatically reduce mitigation costs and make the 1.5 Celsius target far more achievable. Among the strategies to accompany CCS, the study pointed to land-use changes such as reforestation and planting of bioenergy crops to yield negative emission results.
Energy efficiency and lifestyle changes to impact the demand side were seen as accelerators to achieve the lower mean temperature target of 1.5. In particular, lifestyle changes around transportation were seen as critical.
In its conclusions the study states:
“We found that progress in low-carbon energy-supply technologies is the strongest factor for reducing mitigation costs. Moreover, under the constraints of the 1.5 Celsius goal, the relative effectiveness of other socioeconomic factors, such as energy efficiency improvement, lifestyle changes and biomass-related technology promotion, becomes more important in decreasing mitigation cost in the 1.5 Celsius scenarios than in the 2 Celsius scenarios.”
So, in other words, tackling the energy production side of the equation is only part of the solution. Lifestyle changes make a 1.5 Celsius outcome far more likely, one that the Paris Climate Agreement referenced as a nice-to-have.
Why?
Because to-date only 14 U.S. states have comprehensive plans in place for mitigation and adaptation to deal with changing climate and there are 23 coastal U.S. states which will be impacted. That is an underwhelming response to a visible challenge these mayors see with increasing frequency.
In October 2015, the Rising Tides Summit attended by officials from 18 of the 23 coastal U.S. states met to discuss the climate change role the federal government could play. Now with a President-elect who is known more for his endless climate-change denying tweets, it is apparent that the officials from the federal government who attended the Summit, NOAA, FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, not be dissuaded from assisting with climate resilience projects.
Why describe climate change as an octopus?
It goes back to an event that occurred during Florida coast seasonal high tides in November of this year with an octopus washed up into a Miami Beach parking garage. The symbol and evidence of that octopus represents a call to action. States Mayor Zimmer, “the seas are rising, and stronger storms really don’t care whether you’re a liberal or a conservative….It’s going to keep getting more and more frequent and more and more severe.”
What the mayors are asking for is summed up in eight policies:
States Mayor Zimmer about past practices, “Very much the policies are set up in a way where we’re reactive instead of proactive.” But if the recommendations described in the Summit report get appropriate attention and funding then it forecasts that “every $1 invested in pre-disaster resilience,” will end up saving “an average of $4 in future damages.”
Those who wrote the Summit report state in their conclusion that the President-elect can use the recommendations as a roadmap for addressing national infrastructure needs. They state, “this paper can provide guidance to the new administration for ensuring that its investments help communities and local governments enhance their resilience to threats like sea level rise and increasingly extreme weather.” It is no more than what Trump himself asked of the Irish government in helping him to address rising sea levels and coastal erosion threatening one of his golf courses.
In the report it states, “Climate change has the characteristics of a collective action problem at the global scale, because most greenhouse gases (GHGs) accumulate over time and mix globally, and emissions by any agent (e.g., individual, community, company, country) affect other agents. International cooperation is therefore required to effectively mitigate GHG emission and address other climate change issues.”
You might have thought that statement to be obvious but in our human world self-interest tends to be short-sighted. Hence you get statements like the one ExxonMobil recently made to its shareholders in assessing carbon risk. According to Exxon cutting GHGs to the extent required to meet the IPCC’s objective of limiting warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) would mean an 80% reduction. That doesn’t sit well with a company sitting on vast reserves of oil and gas. After all these would become stranded assets. In other words, liabilities sitting on the company’s balance sheet. So in the interest of self-interest Exxon states, “the scenario where governments restrict hydrocarbon production in a way to reduce GHG emissions 80 per cent during the outlook period to 2040 is highly unlikely.” And better yet “based on this analysis, we are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or will become stranded.” In fairness to Exxon they do have a plan to mitigate carbon. Use their oil and gas to replace all those dirty coal-fired power plants and they will have done their bit in cooperating to mitigate GHGs.
Exxon isn’t alone. Chevron and BP have made similar statements. We expect to hear from Shell and Total in the near future. I suspect they will tell the same story.
So what do ordinary folk do when government seems incapable of acting on the climate file, while big oil companies blatantly go on doing what they have always done? Is our human will to address climate change moribund? Are we to let “business as usual” both in government and industry impact the lives of our children and their children?
The IPCC in its latest report incorporating mitigation strategies provides us with 900 behavioral and technological options for dealing with climate change. The goal is to keep the mean temperature of the planet from rising no more than 2 degrees Celsius in this century. To do that we need to not let CO2 levels exceed 500 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. Presently we are 80% there. If we can keep CO2 number below 430 ppm we can limit the rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). If we can do the latter we could actually begin to see a decline in atmospheric temperatures sometime in the 22nd century. But to act as a society to solve a problem outcome a century away takes conviction on the part of all of humanity, even the Exxon’s of the world.
Another thing that the IPCC is telling us is that delaying mitigation efforts by even a decade changes long-term outcomes in terms of global temperature rise. And every decade of delay has associated long-term climatic, political, security, financial and survival consequences.
There is no doubt that global action requires a global carbon tax.
There is no doubt that global action requires that fossil fuel assets in the ground remain there until we at least begin to see a decrease in global average temperatures possibly centuries from now.
Today we are locked in to fossil fuels. Every year we remain this way we compound the problem of addressing climate change with mitigation strategies that can work.
Decarbonizing our society means decarbonizing the way we generate the electricity that runs our planet. That means taking all those other ways we generate electricity, wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, wave, nuclear, hydro and flipping the pie chart from their current contribution of less than 30% to as much as 80% by 2050. And by 2100 eliminating carbon-generated electrical power completely.
Decarbonizing our society means decarbonizing transportation. That means a rapid phase in of alternatives to the internal combustion engine and diesel. It means immediate improvements to the efficiency and emission reductions of these vehicles while electric vehicle technology, hydrogen and fuel cell technology initiatives move us away completely from carbon-based means of transportation. It means developing mass transit in urban settings where almost 80% of us will live by the mid-21st century. It means changing how we build and energize homes and offices, and the retrofitting of existing structures to decarbonize them.
For industry it means new processes and innovation shifting away from carbon-based energy. And of course it means that all industries that produce GHG emissions implement carbon recovery technologies.
It means developing a decarbonizing strategy associated with waste management. We talk today about reduce, re-use and recycle. But worldwide our efforts here are barely registering with only 20% of global municipal waste reprocessed through recycling programs. In decarbonizing waste through re-use and recycling we can recover more of the energy from it and further reduce the use of fossil fuels responsible for much of our waste content.
In decarbonizing our planet we need to end deforestation and begin afforestation, planting lots more trees. In agriculture decarbonization will mean better cropland and grazing land management. What we create from agriculture production will require us to develop better ways to handle the full cycle of production in a far more sustainable way.
For the policymakers of our planet, those we elect and those who govern, action plans should no longer be talking points but rather concrete, budgeted, regulated and enforced. The time for talk is over. And if national governments cannot lead the way then let the governments that will impact more of us in the coming decades, our municipal leaders, drive the agenda. Today thousands of cities have already started down the path of enacting climate action plans. Today cities lead the way in reducing and managing waste. Today cities are seeking mass transit alternatives to the internal combustion engine to move people around. And today cities are looking at green roofs, green energy, urban farms and other strategies to mitigate climate change.
In the IPCC report it states, “to reduce net GHG emissions and/or to enhance resilience to climate change” we will collectively have to spend between $343 and 385 billion U.S. annually. Every decade we delay the dollar cost will rise.
To those of you who read this blog and are of a political stripe, I encourage you to read the final draft of the IPCC Summary for Policymakers. Commit to act on climate change. Commit to decarbonizing. Your descendants will thank you.
