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February 13, 2018May 8, 2018

Will Trump’s America crash Earth’s climate?

US energy consumption by fuel, 1990 to 2050

—US Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Last week, the US Department of Energy (DOE) released its annual report projecting future US energy production and consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This year’s report, entitled Annual Energy Outlook 2018, with Projections to 2050 forecasts a nightmare scenario of increasing fossil fuel use, increasing emissions, lackluster adoption of renewable energy options, and a failure to shift to electric vehicles, even by mid-century.

The graph above is copied from that DOE report. The graph shows past and projected US energy consumption by fuel type. The top line shows “petroleum and other liquids.” This is predominantly crude oil products, with a minor contribution from “natural gas liquids.” For our purposes, we can think of it as representing liquid fuels used in cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships. Note how the US DOE is projecting that in 2050 America’s consumption of these high-emission fuels will be approximately equal to levels today.

The next line down is natural gas. This is used mostly for heating and for electricity generation. Note how the DOE is projecting that consumption (i.e., combustion) of natural gas will be about one-third higher in 2050 than today.

Perhaps worst of all, coal combustion will be almost as high in 2050 as it is today. No surprise, the DOE report (page 15) projects that US GHG emissions will be higher in 2050 than today.

Consumption of renewable energy will rise. The DOE is projecting that in 2050 “other renewables”—essentially electricity from solar photovoltaic panels and wind turbines—will provide twice as much power as today. But that will be only a fraction of the energy supplied by fossil fuels: oil, natural gas, and coal.

How can this be? The world’s nations have committed, in Paris and elsewhere, to slash emissions by mid-century. To keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius, industrial nations will have to cut emissions by half by 2050. So what’s going on in America?

The DOE projections reveal that America’s most senior energy analysts and policymakers believe that US policies currently in place will fail to curb fossil fuel use and reduce GHG emissions. The DOE report predicts, for example, that in 2050 electric vehicles will make up just a small fraction of the US auto fleet. See the graph below. Look closely and you’ll see the small green wedge representing electrical energy use in the transportation sector. The graph also shows that the the consumption of fossil fuels—motor gasoline, diesel fuel, fuel oil, and jet fuel—will be nearly as high in 2050 as it is now. This is important: The latest data from the top experts in the US government predict that, given current policies, the transition to electric vehicles will not happen.

The next graph, below, shows that electricity production from solar arrays will increase significantly. But the projection is that the US will not install significant numbers of wind turbines, so long as current policies remain in force and current market conditions prevail.

The report projects (page 84) that in 2050 electricity generation from the combustion of coal and natural gas will be twice as high as generation from wind turbines and solar panels.

Clearly, this is all just a set of projections. The citizens and governments of the United States can change this future. And they probably will. They can implement policies that dramatically accelerate the transition to electric cars, electric trains, energy-efficient buildings, and low-emission renewable energy.

But the point of this DOE report (and the point of this blog post) is that such policies are not yet in place. In effect, the US DOE report should serve as a warning: continue as now and the US misses its emissions reduction commitments by miles, the Earth probably warms by 3 degrees or more, and we risk setting off a number of global climate feedbacks that could render huge swaths of the planet uninhabitable and kill hundreds of millions of people this century.

The house is on fire. We can put it out. But the US Department of Energy is telling us that, as of now, there are no effective plans to do so.

Perhaps step one is to remove the arsonist-in-chief.

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February 6, 2018February 6, 2018

If you’re for pipelines, what are you against?

Graph of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions, by sector, 2005 to 2039

Canadian greenhouse gas emissions, by sector, 2005 to 2030

As Alberta Premier Notley and BC Premier Horgan square off over the Kinder Morgan / Trans Mountain pipeline, as Alberta and then Saskatchewan move toward elections in which energy and pipelines may be important issues, and as Ottawa pushes forward with its climate plan, it’s worth taking a look at the pipeline debate. Here are some facts that clarify this issue:

1. Canada has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30 percent (to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030).

2. Oil production from the tar sands is projected to increase by almost 70 percent by 2030 (From 2.5 million barrels per day in 2015 to 4.2 million in 2030).

3. Pipelines are needed in order to enable increased production, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and many others.

4. Planned expansion in the tar sands will significantly increase emissions from oil and gas production. (see graph above and this government report)

5. Because there’s an absolute limit on our 2030 emissions (515 million tonnes), if the oil and gas sector is to emit more, other sectors must emit less. To put that another way, since we’re committed to a 30 percent reduction, if the tar sands sector reduces emissions by less than 30 percent—indeed if that sector instead increases emissions—other sectors must make cuts deeper than 30 percent.

The graph below uses the same data as the graph above—data from a recent report from the government of Canada. This graph shows how planned increases in emissions from the Alberta tar sands will force very large reductions elsewhere in the Canadian economy.

Graph of emissions from the Canadian oil & gas sector vs. the rest of the economy, 2015 & 2030 — Emissions from the Canadian oil & gas sector vs. the rest of the economy, 2015 & 2030

Let’s look at the logic one more time: new pipelines are needed to facilitate tarsands expansion; tarsands expansion will increase emissions; and an increase in emissions from the tarsands (rather than a 30 percent decrease) will force other sectors to cut emissions by much more than 30 percent.

But what sector or region or province will pick up the slack? Has Alberta, for instance, checked with Ontario? If Alberta (and Saskatchewan) cut emissions by less than 30 percent, or if they increase emissions, is Ontario prepared to make cuts larger than 30 percent? Is Manitoba or Quebec? If the oil and gas sector cuts by less, is the manufacturing sector prepared to cut by more?

To escape this dilemma, many will want to point to the large emission reductions possible from the electricity sector. Sure, with very aggressive polices to move to near-zero-emission electrical generation (policies we’ve yet to see) we can dramatically cut emissions from that sector. But on the other hand, cutting emission from agriculture will be very difficult. So potential deep cuts from the electricity sector will be partly offset by more modest cuts, or increases, from agriculture, for example.

The graph at the top shows that even as we make deep cuts to emissions from electricity—a projected 60 percent reduction—increases in emissions from the oil and gas sector (i.e. the tar sands) will negate 100 percent of the progress in the electricity sector. The end result is, according to these projections from the government of Canada, that we miss our 2030 target. To restate: according to the government’s most recent projections we will fail to meet our Paris commitment, and the primary reason will be rising emissions resulting from tarsands expansion. This is the big-picture context for the pipeline debate.

We’re entering a new era, one of limits, one of hard choices, one that politicians and voters have not yet learned to navigate. We are exiting the cornucopian era, the age of petro-industrial exuberance when we could have everything; do it all; have our cake, eat it, and plan on having two cakes in the near future. In this new era of biophysical limits on fossil fuel combustion and emissions, on water use, on forest cutting, etc. if we want to do one thing, we may be forced to forego something else. Thus, it is reasonable to ask: If pipeline proponents would have us expand the tar sands, what would they have us contract?

Graph sources: Canada’s 7th National Communication and 3rd Biennial Report, December 2017

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January 9, 2018January 14, 2018

The 100th Anniversary of high-input agriculture

Graph of tractor and horse numbers, Canada, historic, 1910 to 1980

Tractors and horses on farms in Canada, 1910 to 1980

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of input-dependent farming—the birth of what would become modern high-input agriculture. It was in 1918 that farmers in Canada and the US began to purchase large numbers of farm tractors. These tractors required petroleum fuels. Those fuels became the first major farm inputs. In the early decades of the 20th century, farmers became increasingly dependent on fossil fuels, in the middle decades most also became dependent on fertilizers, and in the latter decades they also became dependent on agricultural chemicals and high-tech, patented seeds.

This week’s graph shows tractor and horse numbers in Canada from 1910 to 1980. On both lines, the year 1918 is highlighted in red. Before 1918, there were few tractors in Canada. The tractors that did exist—mostly large steam engines—were too big and expensive for most farms. But in 1918 three developments spurred tractor proliferation: the introduction of smaller, gasoline-engine tractors (The Fordson, for example); a wartime farm-labour shortage; and a large increase in industrial production capacity. In the final year of WWI and in the years after, tractor sales took off. Shortly after, the number of horses on farms plateaued and began to fall. Economists Olmstead and Rhode have produced a similar graph for the US.

It’s important to understand the long-term significance of what has unfolded since 1918. Humans have practiced agriculture for about 10,000 years—about 100 centuries. For 99 centuries, there were almost no farm inputs—no industrial products that farmers had to buy each spring in order to grow their crops. Sure, before 1918, farmers bought farm implements—hoes, rakes, and sickles in the distant past, and plows and binders more recently. And there were some fertilizer products available, such as those derived from seabird guano (manure) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And farmers occasionally bought and sold seeds. But for most farmers in most years before about 1918, the production of a crop did not require purchasing an array of farm inputs. Farm chemicals did not exist, very little fertilizer was available anywhere in the world until after WWII, and farmers had little use for gasoline or diesel fuel. Before 1918, farms were largely self-sufficient, deriving seeds from the previous years’ crop, fertility from manure and nitrogen-fixing crops, and pulling-power from horses energized by the hay and grain that grew on the farm itself. For 99 of the 100 centuries that agriculture has existed, farms produced the animal- and crop-production inputs they needed. Nearly everything that went into farming came out of farming.

For 99 percent of the time that agriculture has existed there were few farm inputs, no farm-input industries, and little talk of “high input costs.” Agricultural production was low-input, low-cost, solar-powered, and low-emission. In the most recent 100 years, however, we’ve created a new kind of agricultural system: one that is high-input, high-cost, fossil-fuelled, and high-emission.

Modern agriculture is also, admittedly, high-output. But this last fact must be understood in context: the incredible food-output tonnage of modern agriculture is largely a reflection of the megatonnes of fertilizers, fuels, and chemicals we push into the system. Nitrogen fertilizer illustrates this process. To produce, transport, and apply one tonne of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer requires an amount of energy equal to almost two tonnes of gasoline. Modern agriculture is increasingly a system for turning fossil fuel Calories into food Calories. Food is increasingly a petroleum product.

The high-input era has not been kind to farmers. Two-thirds of Canadian farmers have been ushered out of agriculture over the past two generations. More troubling and more recent: the number of young farmers—those under 35—has been reduced by two-thirds since 1991. Farm debt is at a record high: nearly $100 billion. And about the same amount, $100 billion, has had to be transferred from taxpayers to farmers since the mid-1980s to keep the Canadian farm sector afloat. Farmers are struggling with high costs and low margins.

This is not a simplistic indictment of “industrial agriculture.” We’re not going back to horses. But on the 100th anniversary of the creation of fossil-fuelled, high-input agriculture we need to think clearly and deeply about our food production future. As our fossil-fuel supplies dwindle, as greenhouse gas levels rise, as we struggle to feed and employ billions more people, and as we struggle with many other environmental and economic problems, we will need to rethink and radically transform our food production systems. Our current food system isn’t “normal”: it’s an anomaly—a break with the way that agriculture has operated for 99 percent of its history. It’s time to ask hard questions and make big changes. It’s time to question the input-maximizing production systems agribusiness corporations have created, and to explore new methods of low-input, low-energy-use, low-emission production.

Rather than maximizing input use, we need to maximize net farm incomes, maximize the number of farm families on the land, and maximize the resilience and sustainability of our food systems.

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December 8, 2017December 8, 2017

Saskatchewan’s new Climate Change Strategy: reckless endangerment

Saskatchewan greenhouse gas emissions relative to selected nations

Saskatchewan’s greenhouse gas emissions are extremely high: 66 tonnes per person per year. What if Saskatchewan was a country, instead of a province? If that were the case, we’d find that no country on Earth had per-capita emissions higher than ours.

This week’s graph compares per-capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Saskatchewan to emissions in a variety of countries. The units are tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂-eq). The data is for the years 2014 and 2015, the most recent years for which data is available. The graph shows that Saskatchewan’s emissions are higher than those of petro-states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar and manufacturing nations such as China and Germany.

Our world-topping per-person emissions form part of the context for this week’s release of the Government of Saskatchewan’s climate strategy: Prairie Resilience: A Made-in-Saskatchewan Climate Change Strategy. The report isn’t really a plan of action—more an attempt at public relations and a collection of re-announcements. Most critically, it lacks a specific set of measures that can, taken together, enable citizens and businesses in this province to reduce our GHG emissions by 30 percent by 2030. I’ll review some of the key points of the document, but first just a bit more context.

In Paris in 2015, the world’s governments reaffirmed a target of limiting global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (relative to pre-industrial levels). However, more and more scientists are warning that 2 degrees is not a “safe level,” and that temperature increases of this magnitude will create floods, droughts, storms, and deaths in many parts of the world. But a 2 degree rise is better than 4 or 5 degrees.

So that’s the first point: our 2 degree target is weak. To this we’ve added inadequate emission-reduction commitments. In the lead-up to the Paris climate talks the world’s governments each submitted specific emission-reduction commitments. Canada committed to cut this country’s emissions by 30 percent (below 2005 levels) by 2030. Other nations made similar pledges. But here’s the troubling part: When you add up all those emissions-reduction commitments you find that they put the world on track, not for 2 degrees of warming, but for 3.2 degrees (UN Emissions Gap Report 2017). So this is the context for recent climate change strategies from Saskatchewan and other provinces: These plans amount to inadequate provincial contributions to an inadequate national commitment to a weak international target.

One final bit of context: not only are per-capita emissions in Saskatchewan among the highest in the world, they continue to increase: up 65 percent in a generation (1990 to 2015). Some will want to excuse our province: it’s cold here. But our per-capita emissions are almost twice as high as those in the Northwest Territories, nine times as high as in the Yukon, and four times as high as those in neighbouring Manitoba. Others will want to talk about the fact that Saskatchewan is a resource-producing and agricultural province; our prosperity depends upon our ability to keep farming and mining and producing oil and gas. There’s a grain of truth to some parts of that idea, but it simply cannot be the case that “prosperity” requires the emission of 66 tonnes of GHGs per person. Citizens in every nation want prosperity. But if everyone in the world felt entitled to emit GHGs at the same rate as us, there would soon be no Saskatchewan as we know it. There would be a parched desert here, and submerged cities worldwide. In a climate- and carbon-constrained world, prosperity simply cannot require Saskatchewan-sized emissions.

So, with this for context, what does the Saskatchewan Climate Change Strategy propose? The government has re-committed to increasing the production of low-emission electricity—to the “expansion of renewable energy sources up to 50 per cent of generating capacity” by 2030. This is good news and we must ensure that this happens, well before 2030, if possible. But careful readers might note three things in the preceding commitment: 1. the words “up to.” 2. generating capacity is not the same as output; because of the intermittent nature of wind power, for example, 50 percent of capacity will not equate to 50 percent of production. 3. electricity provides less than 30 percent of Saskatchewan’s total energy demand. Thus, moving to 50 percent renewable/low-emission sources for electricity leaves 80+ percent of Saskatchewan’s energy needs filled by high-emission fossil fuels.

The Climate Change Strategy includes the creation of a technology fund. But this is not new. The government passed legislation in 2010 requiring large emitters to pay into a green technology fund. That law was never put into force.

Predictably, the Strategy rejects a carbon tax, arguing that such a tax “would make it more difficult for our province to respond effectively to climate change because a simple tax will not result in the innovations required to actually reduce emissions.”

The Strategy also includes a vague mix of commitments to reporting, potential future measures to reduce methane emissions, emission-intensity targets, and offset trading. Think of this as a cap-and-trade system without a cap.

The Strategy includes some positive steps but fails to deliver what we need: a comprehensive, detailed plan that will result in a 30 percent reduction in emissions by 2030. This failing is especially evident when one takes into account probable emissions increases that may result from economic growth, planned increases in energy production, and increased use of agricultural inputs such as nitrogen fertilizer. (Applied tonnage of N fertilizer has doubled since 2002.)

Overall, the Strategy steers away from discussions of emissions reduction and focuses instead on the idea of “resilience.” That word appears 44 times in 12 pages. The report defines resilience as “the ability to cope with, adapt to, and recover from stress and change.” But resilience—coping, adapting, and recovering—may simply prove impossible in the face of the magnitude of climate change that will scorch our province under a business-as-usual scenario. The high-emission, fossil-fuel-dependent future assumed in the Climate Change Strategy would raise the average temperature of this province by 6 to 8 degrees Celsius (sources available on request). Climate disruption of that magnitude vetoes adaptation and mocks resilience.

And even if we in Saskatchewan could find ways to adapt and make ourselves resilient in the face of the blows that may be inflicted by a hotter, stormier, more damaging climate, we must ask: Will poor and vulnerable populations around the world be able to make themselves “resilient” to the climate change that our emissions trigger? The global proliferation of Saskatchewan-level emissions would cause cities to disappear under the waves, food-growing regions to bake and wither, and tropical storms to become more numerous and damaging. What is our ethical position if we are among the greatest contributors to these calamities, yet all we offer affected populations is the advice to make themselves more resilient?

A real plan is possible. Emission reductions of 30 percent by 2030 are attainable at costs that Saskatchewan can afford. Holding global temperature increases to 2 degrees also remains possible. All this can be accomplished if governments act with courage and integrity, rapidly and effectively, and in the interests of citizens and the future.

Graph sources:
Saskatchewan and other provinces: Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators: Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
Other nations: World Resources Institute, CAIT Climate Data Explorer.

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November 25, 2017January 15, 2018

Geoengineering: 12 things you need to know

Graphic showing various geoengineering methods

—Image courtesy of Climate Central

The following draws upon extensive research by ETC Group. I have been privileged to serve on ETC’s Board of Directors for several years.

1. What is “geoengineering”? It is the intentional, largescale, technological manipulation of Earth’s systems. Geoengineering is usually discussed as a solution to climate change, but it could also be used to attempt to de-acidify oceans or fix ozone holes. Here, I’ll concentrate on climate geoengineering.

2. There are two main types of climate geoengineering:
i. Technologies to partially shade the sun in order to reduce warming (called “solar radiation management” or SRM). For example, high-altitude aircraft could be used to dump thousands of tonnes of sulphur compounds into the stratosphere to form a reflective parasol over the Earth.
ii. Attempts to pull carbon dioxide (CO₂) out of the air. One proposal is ocean fertilization. In theory, we could dump nutrients into the ocean to spur plankton/algae growth. As the plankton multiply, they would take up atmospheric CO₂ that has dissolved in the water. When they die, they would sift down through the water column, taking the carbon to the ocean floor.

3. The effects of geoengineering will be uneven and damaging. For example, sun-blocking SRM technologies might lower the global average temperature, but regional temperature changes would probably be uneven. Other geoengineering techniques—cloud whitening and weather modification—could similarly alter temperatures in some parts of the planet relative to others. And if we change relative regional temperatures we would also shift wind and rainfall patterns. Geoengineering will almost certainly cause droughts, storms, and floods. Going further, however, all droughts, storms, and floods (even those that might have occurred in the absence of geoengineering) could come to be seen as caused by geoengineering and the governments controlling those climate interventions. If we go down this path, there will no longer be any “acts of God”; weather will become a product of government.

4. These technologies are dangerous in other ways. Seeding the stratosphere with sulphur particles could catalyze ozone depletion. Shifts in rain and temperature patterns may cause shifts in ecosystems and wildlife habitats. Multiplying plankton biomass may affect fish species distribution and biodiversity. Moreover, as with any enormously powerful technology, it is simply impossible to foresee the full range of unintended consequences.

5. Geoengineering is unilateral, undemocratic, inequitable, and unjust. In a geoengineered world, who will control the global thermostat? Solar radiation management and similar schemes will inevitably be controlled by the dominant governments and corporations—a rich-nation “coalition of the dimming.” But benefits and costs will be distributed unequally, creating winners and losers. Where will less powerful nations appeal if they find themselves on the losing end? Our climate interventions will be calibrated to maximize benefits to rich nations: the same countries that have benefited most from fossil fuel combustion and that have caused the climate crisis. We appear to be contemplating a triple injustice: poor nations will be denied their fair share of the benefits of fossil fuel use; hit hardest by climate change; and left as collateral damage from geoengineering. Finally, geoengineering is undemocratic in another way. It is a choice to pursue technical interventions rather than social or political reforms. It reveals that many governments and elites would risk damaging the stratosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere rather than risk difficult conversations with voters, CEOs, or shareholders.

6. Geoengineering embodies and proliferates a certain worldview: masculine, nature-dominating, imperialistic, managerial and technocratic, hostile to limits, and hubristic.

7. Geoengineering will create conflicts. Because technologies such as SRM are transboundary and have the potential to shift weather patterns they can lead to charges that other nations are stealing rain and, ultimately, food. To get a sense of the potential for conflict, imagine the US reaction to unilateral deployment of weather- and climate-altering technologies by Russia or China.

8. It is untestable. Small-scale experiments with SRM or similar technologies will not reveal potential side-effects. These will only become evident after planet-scale deployment, and perhaps years after the fact, as weather systems move toward new equilibria.

9. Deployment may be irreversible. Once we start we might not be able to stop. Geoengineering would probably proceed alongside continued greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But if we deploy sun-blocking technologies and simultaneously push atmospheric CO₂ levels past 500 or 600 parts per million, we wouldn’t be able to terminate our dimming programs, no matter how damaging the effects of long-term geoengineering are revealed to be. If we did stop, high GHG levels would trigger sudden and dramatic warming. We risk locking ourselves into untestable, unpredictable, uncontrollable, and planet-altering technologies.

10. Can geoengineering “buy us time”? Proponents argue that these technologies can buy us some time: time humanity needs in order to ramp up emissions reductions. But geoengineering is more likely to buy time for the status quo, to prolong unsustainable fossil fuel production and energy inefficiency, and to blunt and delay urgent and effective action. The effect of geoengineering is not so much to buy time as to waste time.

11. There will be attempts to pressure us into accepting geoengineering. Geoengineering proponents may soon raise the alarm and claim that we must accept these risky technologies or face even worse damage from climate change. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” they will say. From these same sources may come arguments that geoengineering is necessary to hold global average temperature increases below 1.5 or 2 degrees and thus spare the world’s poorest and most vulnerable peoples. Such arguments would be both ironic and duplicitous. The same government and corporate leaders who today deny or downplay climate change, or deny the need for rapid action to cut emissions, may tomorrow be the ones raising the alarm, and claiming that there is no solution other than geoengineering. They may pivot from claiming that there is no problem to claiming that there is no alternative.

12. Geoengineering will be pushed by the rich and powerful. A growing number of corporations, elites, and politicians see the solution to climate change, not in emissions reduction, but in massive techno-interventions into the atmosphere or oceans to block the sun or suck up carbon. When he was CEO of Exxon, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of climate change: “It’s an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions.” Exxon employs many geoengineering proponents and theorists. Former executive at oil company BP and former Under-Secretary for Science in the Obama administration Steven Koonin is lead author of a report entitled Climate Engineering Responses to Climate Emergencies. Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson offered a $25 million prize to anyone who could solve climate change by geoengineering. Bill Gates and other Microsoft billionaires are funding geoengineering research. Newt Gingrich is the former speaker of the US House of Representatives and a Vice Chairman of Donald Trump’s transition team. His views on geoengineering are worth quoting because they may be representative of a growing sentiment among political and corporate leaders. Gingrich wrote in a 2008 fundraising letter:

“[T]he idea behind geoengineering is to release fine particles in or above the stratosphere that would then block a small fraction of the sunlight and thus reduce atmospheric temperature.

… Instead of imposing an estimated $1 trillion cost on the economy …, geoengineering holds forth the promise of addressing global warming concerns for just a few billion dollars a year. Instead of penalizing ordinary Americans, we would have an option to address global warming by rewarding scientific innovation.

My colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute are taking a closer look at geoengineering, and we should too. …

Our message should be: Bring on the American Ingenuity. Stop the green pig.”

For reasons outlined above and many others, we must not go down the path of geoengineering. These technologies—massive government and corporate interventions into the core flows and structures of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere—are among the most dangerous initiatives ever devised. Geoengineering must be banned; it is untestable, uncontrollable, unjust, probably irreversible, and potentially devastating. There exist better, safer options: rapid and dramatic emissions reductions; and a government-led mobilization toward a transformation of global energy, transport, industrial, and food systems.

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October 18, 2017October 9, 2017

Setting our future aflame: Projected energy use to 2035

Graph of primary energy consumption by source or fuel, 1965 to 2015, with projections to 2035

Global primary energy use, by source or fuel, 1965 to 2015, with projections to 2035 (billions of tonnes of oil equivalent)

In a recent post (link here) I said that holding global temperature increases below dangerous levels would require “a mobilization of near-wartime scale and speed to transform the global economy and its energy and transportation systems.” Most climate scientists looking at carbon budgets agree that global greenhouse gas emissions need to fall to near zero in the 2040s (to hold temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius) or 2050s (to hold increases to 2 degrees).

So, how are we doing? BP (formerly British Petroleum) is one of the world’s leading sources for energy statistics and projections. This week’s graph is taken from the 2017 edition of its Energy Outlook. The graph shows BP’s projections of energy use to 2035, based on current trends. The picture is bleak.

BP’s projections show oil use/combustion rising over the next 18 years. Natural gas combustion rises even faster. Even coal combustion increases. Not surprising, BP projects rising GHG emissions for the period from 2017 to 2035. But this is exactly the time frame in which we are supposed to be rapidly reducing emissions.

If BP is correct, if we act in the ways they are predicting, there is zero chance of meeting the Paris commitments of reducing GHG emissions by 30 percent by 2030. And there is zero chance of holding temperature increases below 2 degrees. The picture BP paints, if we allow it to come to pass, would push global temperature increases past 3 degrees, or even higher. That would be a cataclysmic amount of warming.

I’m told that fear and bad news are not good motivators. But neither are delusion or denial. We must stop telling ourselves fanciful stories about salvation by solar shingles. The citizens of the world need to know the facts about our situation and our trajectory. There is a vague feeling that we’re doing the right thing, that solar and wind power are growing so fast that we can meet our targets, that a modest carbon tax levied sometime in the future will be enough to put us onto the right track. No. Projections by BP and others tell a wholly different story. The facts indicate that we are on track to climate calamity. That may not be welcome news, but it is the truth. Whether it motivates people remains to be seen.

Graph source: BP, Energy Outlook: 2017 edition

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October 5, 2017

Everything must double: Economic growth to mid-century

Graph of GDP of the world's largest economies, 2016 vs 2050

Size of the world’s 17 largest economies, 2016, and projections for 2050

In February 2017, global accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released a report on economic growth entitled The Long View: How will the Global Economic Order Change by 2050? The graph above is based on data from that report. (link here) It shows the gross domestic product (GDP) of the largest economies in the world in 2016, and projections for 2050. The values in the graph are stated in constant (i.e., inflation adjusted) 2016 dollars.

PwC projects that China’s economy in 2050 will be larger than the combined size of the five largest economies today—a list that includes China itself, but also the US, India, Japan, and Germany.

Moreover, the expanded 2050 economies of China and India together ($102.5 trillion in GDP) will be almost as large as today’s global economy ($107 trillion).

We must not, however, simply focus on economic growth “over there.” The US economy will nearly double in size by 2050, and Americans will continue to enjoy per-capita GDP and consumption levels that are among the highest in the world. The size of the Canadian economy is similarly projected to nearly double. The same is true for several EU countries, Australia, and many other “rich” nations.

Everything must double

PwC’s report tells us that between now and 2050, the size of the global economy will more than double. Other reports concur (See the OECD data here). And this doubling of the size of the global economy is just one metric—just one aspect of the exponential growth around us. Indeed, between now and the middle decades of this century, nearly everything is projected to double. This table lists just a few examples.

Table of projected year of doubling for various energy, consumption, transport, and other metrics — Projected year of doubling for selected energy, consumption, and transport metrics

At least one thing, however, is supposed to fall to half

While we seem committed to doubling everything, the nations of the world have also made a commitment to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by half by the middle decades of this century. In the lead-up to the 2015 Paris climate talks, Canada, the US, and many other nations committed to cut GHG emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Nearly every climate scientist who has looked at carbon budgets agrees that we must cut emissions even faster. To hold temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels, emissions must fall by half by about the 2040s, and to near-zero shortly after.

Is it rational to believe that we can double the number of cars, airline flights, air conditioners, and steak dinners and cut global GHG emissions by half?

To save the planet from climate chaos and to spare our civilization from ruin, we must—at least in the already-rich neighborhoods—end the doubling and redoubling of economic activity and consumption. Economic growth of the magnitude projected by PwC, the OECD, and nearly every national government will make it impossible to cut emissions, curb temperature increases, and preserve advanced economies and stable societies. As citizens of democracies, it is our responsibility to make informed, responsible choices. We must choose policies that curb growth.

Graph source: PriceWaterhouseCoopers

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September 27, 2017September 27, 2017

Some good news on climate change

A graph produced by Millar et al. illustrating their re-assessment of carbon budgets.

A September 18th article in the journal Nature Geoscience provides some good news in the struggle to save human civilization (and perhaps half the planet’s species) from the ravages of climate change. The article by Richard Millar and nine colleagues calculates that there is still time to hold global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. (Article link is here.)

A 1.5 degree target was set in Paris in 2015. While many people assert that holding temperature increases to 1.5 degrees is impossible, Millar et al. reassess carbon budgets to show that the target is attainable. By their calculations, humans can emit an additional 700 to 900 billion tonnes of CO₂ and still have a 66% chance of holding temperature increases below 1.5 degrees. That amount of CO₂ is approximately equal to 20 years of emissions at current rates. (Previous assessments indicated that the carbon budget for 1.5 degrees would be used up in 5 to 7 years at current emission rates.)

The findings in the Millar paper are good news. Here’s why: they take away the argument that “it’s too late.” We still have it within our power to hold temperature increases below dangerous levels, spare low-lying island nations, prevent the inundation of rich river-delta agricultural lands in Bangladesh and elsewhere, retain the Greenland ice sheet, and prevent the worst ravages of climate change. Here’s the message everyone should hear: It’s not too late.

But while it’s not too late, it is late. The other message people should take from this article is that we have no time to spare. Aggressive action is necessary now. If we are to save ourselves from ourselves we must embark on a mobilization of near-wartime scale and speed to transform the global economy and its energy and transportation systems. We need government-led mobilization for transformation.

The article’s lead author, Richard Millar, wrote a commentary stating that “the window for achieving 1.5C is still narrowly open. If very aggressive mitigation scenarios can be implemented from today onwards, they may be sufficient to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.” (Find that commentary here.) At a press event he stated that holding increases to 1.5 degrees requires “starting reductions immediately and then reducing emissions to zero over 40 years.” Like nearly everyone else who has looked at this issue, Millar and his team have concluded that emissions reductions must begin immediately and emissions from the global economy must be reduced to zero by the 2050s or 2060s.

So here’s where we are: Millar et al. calculate that we have the time (if only just). We have the technologies: solar panels, wind turbines, electric trains, net-zero and passive solar homes. We have historical examples of action on a similar scale: the WWII repurposing of the major industrial economies. And we have the productive capacity: a global manufacturing sector of unprecedented scale and output. Civilian and military aircraft makers must be compelled to immediately begin building trains. Auto makers must build electric cars. The home renovation industry must be redirected away from fantasy kitchens and home spas and toward energy-efficiency retrofits. And electrical utilities must rapidly replace GHG-emitting generation plants with near-zero-emission alternatives. And we must do all these things at rates that reflect that our future depends upon our success.

The calculations by Millar et al. are sure to be controversial and closely examined. They may be revised. But the paper has weight because the team that wrote it includes many of the leading experts on carbon budgets. As climate scientist Glen Peter notes here: “the authors of this paper developed the idea of carbon budgets, are the world leading experts on carbon budgets, and derived the carbon budgets for the IPCC process.” We should all hope that Millar and his colleagues are correct in their reassessment.

The graph above is taken from a commentary by Millar and adapted from the article by Millar et al. (Link to the commentary here.)

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August 24, 2017August 24, 2017

Efficiency, the Jevons Paradox, and the limits to economic growth

Graph of the cost of lighting in the UK, 1300-2000

I’ve been thinking about efficiency. Efficiency talk is everywhere. Car buyers can purchase ever more fuel-efficient cars. LED lightbulbs achieve unprecedented efficiencies in turning electricity into visible light. Solar panels are more efficient each year. Farmers are urged toward fertilizer-use efficiency. And our Energy Star appliances are the most efficient ever, as are the furnaces and air conditioners in many homes.

The implication of all this talk and technology is that efficiency can play a large role in solving our environmental problems. Citizens are encouraged to adopt a positive, uncritical, and unsophisticated view of efficiency: we’ll just make things more efficient and that will enable us to reduce resource use, waste, and emissions, to solve our problems, and to pave the way for “green growth” and “sustainable development.”

But there’s something wrong with this efficiency solution: it’s not working. The current environmental multi-crisis (depletion, extinction, climate destabilization, ocean acidification, plastics pollution, etc.) is not occurring as a result of some failure to achieve large efficiency gains. The opposite. It is occurring after a century of stupendous and transformative gains. Indeed, the efficiencies of most civilizational processes (e.g., hydroelectric power generation, electrical heating and lighting, nitrogen fertilizer synthesis, etc.) have increased by so much that they are now nearing their absolute limits—their thermodynamic maxima. For example, engineers have made the large electric motors that power factories and mines exquisitely efficient; those motors turn 90 to 97 percent of the energy in electricity into usable shaft power. We have maximized efficiencies in many areas, and yet our environmental problems are also at a maximum. What gives?

There are many reasons why efficiency is not delivering the benefits and solutions we’ve been led to expect. One is the “Jevons Paradox.” That Paradox predicts that, as the efficiencies of energy converters increase—as cars, planes, or lightbulbs become more efficient—the cost of using these vehicles, products, and technologies falls, and those falling costs spur increases in use that often overwhelm any resource-conservation gains we might reap from increasing efficiencies. Jevons tells us that energy efficiency often leads to more energy use, not less. If our cars are very fuel efficient and our operating costs therefore low, we may drive more, more people may drive, and our cities may sprawl outward so that we must drive further to work and shop. We get more miles per gallon, or per dollar, so we drive more miles and use more gallons. The Jevons Paradox is a very important concept to know if you’re trying to understand our world and analyze our situation.

The graph above helps illustrate the Jevons Paradox. It shows the cost of a unit of artificial light (one hour of illumination equivalent to a modern 100 Watt incandescent lightbulb) in England over the past 700 years. The currency units are British Pounds, adjusted for inflation. The dramatic decline in costs reflects equally dramatic increases in efficiency.

Adjusted for inflation, lighting in the UK was more than 100 times more affordable in 2000 than in 1900 and 3,000 time more affordable than in 1800. Stated another way, because electrical power plants have become more efficient (and thus electricity has become cheaper), and because new lighting technologies have become more efficient and produce more usable light per unit of energy, an hour’s pay for the average worker today buys about 100 times more artificial light than it did a century ago and 3,000 time more than two centuries ago.

But does all this efficiency mean that we’re using less energy for lighting? No. Falling costs have spurred huge increases in demand and use. For example, the average UK resident in the year 2000 consumed 75 times more artificial light than did his or her ancestor in 1900 and more than 6,000 times more than in 1800 (Fouquet and Pearson). Much of this increase was in the form of outdoor lighting of streets and buildings. Jevons was right: large increases in efficiency have meant large decreases in costs and large increases in lighting demand and energy consumption.

Another example of the Jevons Paradox is provided by passenger planes. Between 1960 and 2016, the per-seat fuel efficiency of jet airliners tripled or quadrupled (IPCC). This, in turn, helped lower the cost of flying by more than 60%. A combination of lower airfares, increasing incomes, and a growing population has driven a 50-fold increase in global annual air travel since 1960—from 0.14 trillion passenger-kilometres per year to nearly 7 trillion (see here for more on the exponential growth in air travel). Airliners have become three or four times more fuel efficient, yet we’re now burning seventeen times more fuel. William Stanley Jevons was right.

One final point about efficiency. “Efficiency” talk serves an important role in our society and economy: it licenses growth. The idea of efficiency allows most people to believe that we can double and quadruple the size of the global economy and still reduce energy use and waste production and resource depletion. Efficiency is one of our civilization’s most important licensing myths. The concept of efficiency-without-limit has been deployed to green-light the project of growth-without-end.

Graph sources: Roger Fouquet, Heat Power and Light: Revolutions in Energy Services

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August 1, 2017April 3, 2018

Earning negative returns: Energy use in modern food systems

Graph of energy use in the U.S. food system

Energy use in the U.S. food system, 2010, 2011, and 2012

Humans eat food and food gives us energy. Some humans use some of that energy to move their bodies and limbs to produce more food. Our great-grandparents ate hearty breakfasts and used some of that food energy to power their work in fields or gardens. Here’s the important part: until the fossil fuel age, our food production work had to produce more energy than it required. We had to achieve positive returns on our energy investments. If we expended 1 Calorie of energy working in the field, the resulting food had to yield 3, 4, 5, or more Calories, or else we and those who depended upon us would starve.

Pioneering research by David and Marcia Pimentel and others show that traditional food systems yielded positive returns. The Pimentels’ book, Food, Energy, and Society, documents that for every unit of energy that a traditional farmer (i.e., no fossil fuels) put into cultivating and harvesting corn or other crops, that farmer received back 5 to 10 units. For almost the entire 10,000-year history of agriculture, food systems were net energy producers. Food powered societies and civilizations.

In the 20^th century we did something unprecedented: we turned human food systems from energy sources into energy sinks. Today, for every Calorie consumed in North America, 13.3 Calories (mostly in the form of fossil fuels) have been expended. This calculation includes all energy use in the food system: farm production, transport, processing, packaging, retailing, in-home food preservation and cooking, energy use in restaurants, etc. It also takes into account the fact that 30 to 40 percent of all food produced is thrown away.

Traditional food systems generated an energy return on investment (EROI) of between 5:1 and 10:1. Because our modern food system returns one unit of energy for every 13.3 invested, the EROI works out to just 0.08:1.*

The graph above shows energy use in the US food system in the years 2010, 2011, and 2012. The data is from a recent report published by the USDA. It shows very high levels of energy use throughout the entire food system. Perhaps surprising, aggregate food-related energy use in US homes—running refrigerators, powering ovens, washing dishes—far exceeds aggregate energy use on US farms. Similarly, energy use in food services (food served in restaurants, hospitals, prisons, care homes, etc.) also exceeds energy use on farms. This data shows that the entire food system is very energy costly. As we’re forced to curtail fossil fuel use we will be forced to dramatically transform all parts of our food systems.

* This comparison does not take into account the firewood used to cook meals in traditional systems. But even taking that into account we still find that traditional systems have EROI values that were (and are) large multiples of the EROI values for fossil-fueled systems.

Graph source: Canning, Rehkamp, Waters, and Etemadnia, The Role of Fossil Fuels in the U.S. Food System and the American Diet (USDA, 2017)

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