Humans add about ten cubic kilometres of carbon to the air every year. The
ocean is about a billion cubic kilometres in size. Storing all the added
annual carbon in the sea would add 0.000001% to the size of the sea, if the CO2
could be converted to pure carbon. A better storage location might be tarring
all the roads of Asia, using bitumen made from ocean produced algae,Robert
Tulip .
From: Peter Eisenberger <[email protected]>
To: Klaus Lackner <[email protected]>
Cc: Robert H. Socolow <[email protected]>; Greg Rau <[email protected]>;
Geoengineering <[email protected]>; "[email protected]"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, 26 August 2017, 10:17
Subject: Re: [geo] The influence of learning about (CDR) on support for
mitigation policies
On the question of whether there is enough storage capacity to accomodate the
amount of carbon we need remove in human infrastructure I would like to point
out that the answer is not a matter of some constraint because as far as I know
there is no limit to the useful carbon based infrastructure one could build.
Since the building of infrastructure is known to have the largest positive
feedback in terms of its social return on capital employed the more
infrastructure we build the more jobs there will be , the more poverty will be
eliminated (see attached paper) . A good example of a different way of
thinking about carbon based infrastructure is that carbon based buildings can
be much taller allowing for more space to provide living space without
consuming more land area. Architects I talk to alrady recognize that carbon
fiber will revolutionize our buildings and of course our transportation system
as well. Less well appreciated is the carbon based technlogy is likley in the
longer term to replace silicon. Of course all our chemicals and pharmecuticals
are also carbon based and all of them can be made starting from gaseous CO2.
But my point is that using Co2 from the air removes the classic problem that
has plaqued our natural resource economy where there are mal distribution of
resources and limits to their availabiity.I once asked my Princeton Economic
Professor what prevents our economy from being a big posey scheme -the more
people buy the more jobs there are the more people have income to buy etc his
answer was resource constraint that would eventually raise the cost and today
he would add the cost to our environment. In the attached paper is a formal
argument how having an economy that does not have constraints and does not have
environmental costs formally enables this postive feedback economy. A simple
way to make this point is that in nature an ecosystem that uses more sun , more
water and more CO2 is a tropical forest -nature propers - I argue we are part
of nature and will also prosper if we make our in puts renewable energy , water
and co2 from the air.
On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 2:24 PM, Klaus Lackner <[email protected]> wrote:
Let me clarify a point. CCS is not just geological storage, it is not just
point source capture at power plants and CCS in my view is necessary to balance
the books. If we do not capture CO2 and store it safely and permanently, we
will not manage 2 degrees. We may make 5 degrees without it. Unlike Peter, I
am not sure that we have enough infrastructure to hold the carbon we need to
hold. I am very open to all sorts of strategies to reduce CO2 emissions. If we
do, that would be great, if not we end up storing the carbon we get from
somewhere. I very much doubt that this somewhere includes many old coal plants.
I very much doubt that retrofitting of coal plants is what will save us.
First there are not enough of them, and second we haven’t figured out how to do
it cost-effectively. I think we have to seriously consider the possibility
that fossil fuels will keep playing a role in the future. But I also want to
be very clear that looking to retrofitting old coal plants is a lousy insurance
policy. In my view it will simply not work. At the same time, I understand the
conundrum of the old coal plants, which is mainly a problem for their owners.
I also realize that many of these “old” coal plants outside of the United
States are brand new coal plants and therefore would under normal circumstances
have a 50 to 70 year life span left. They are only “old” in the sense that
they have been built already and are running. They result in a locked in
amount of future CO2 emissions. Eliminating these emission means shutting them
down. The hope is that we can remove 70% of their carbon footprint by
retrofitting them with scrubbers and CCS. I doubt this will work. This makes a
2 degree strategy very difficult. I also agree with you that our strategy
should not be 2 degree or bust, we should figure out how to stop warming as
expeditiously as we can. In part, this will depend on the political will to
deal with the problem, which also includes tradeoffs between economic growth
and CO2 mitigation, which are not always ours to make. It may very well be
that the next generation will have to stop warming at 5K. Our goal has to be
to help as much as we can today. I will make two arguments. First coal plants
are not so big that focusing on them is all that useful. Second, retrofits
have failed as a strategy. As the cost of electricity has come down over the
years, retrofitting old plants will make them uncompetitive. Alternatives will
stop the old plants, with or without carbon constraints. So, let’s first look
at the capacity of existing coal plants to cause climate change: World CO2
emissions from coal are around 14 Gt per year, this includes steel and cement
and not just coal electric power. Even though it includes more than coal power
plants, let’s go with that number. It is our coal legacy infrastructure. If we
assume the average remaining life of this infrastructure is 30 years, we are
looking at about 400 Gt of CO2 emissions locked in (about 110 Gt C). This is a
lot, but nowhere close to a 5-degree warming. According to the modelers who
talk about transient responses (see for example Andrew MacDougall, Curr Clim
Change Rep (2016) 2:39–47), the warming response to a given amount of CO2
emission is linear in the emission and the warming is between 0.7 and 2.5
K/EgC. On the high end, the current coal consumption for 30 years would add
0.3K warming. (I am not sure I really believe the details of these models, but
the order of magnitude seems right. Coal is maybe a third of the total, and we
warmed by three to four times as much on 550 GtC). The conclusion from this is
that if you are worried about 1.5 degree warming or 2 degree warming, then coal
emissions may have to be eliminated, because coal legacy alone could push you
over the limit. (If you take the low end of their numbers, then you would
still make it even if they kept running). If instead, you worry about five
degree warming, you should develop a strategy that for the least possible cost
lowers total emissions the most, not a strategy that goes after a particular
source because that source looks particularly offensive. For the five-degree
case Peter’s logic is particularly pertintent. Indeed, if this logic is
correct, then the highest priority is to stop increasing the size of the future
legacy pool and stop building more coal plants. For this you have to make sure
that alternatives to coal are cheaper than coal. You could do this via policy
which biases the playing field to alternatives, but then many a country with
cheap coal would balk. It is more effective to develop cheaper alternatives,
and such alternatives are clearly emerging, so let’s help them along. Since
coal plants have a hard time with load following, the introduction of cheap PV
into the grid, actually pushes coal out, as it improves the competitiveness of
natural gas that can load follow. You don’t need storage to push coal out!
Even without storage becoming cheap, coal will lose competitiveness with PV
delivering more power to the grid. Again, Peter’s point of focusing on
renewable energy will help push the system in the right direction. It puts us
on a pathway that renders new coal plants (of the old style) non-competitive,
and in many places will even force old-coal plants into shutdown. By the way
pushing coal out through competition is not an economic catastrophe for
developing countries. It of course will economically hurt the owners of the
coal plants, but society will end up with cheaper power than it would have
otherwise, so there is a social benefit in such a transition. You can think
of it as an example of Schumpeter’s creative destruction. I would add one more
point: Retrofitting CCS on an existing coal plant is not likely an economic
choice. 25 years of research have shown that it does not pay. Assume the
world decides to actually deal with the CO2 problem, will we then retrofit the
old coal plant with scrubbers or will we write them off as stranded assets? I
argue that we have no choice but to do the latter. Many years ago, I argued
that a coal plant could afford $60/ton of CO2 before it loses competitiveness
with a US nuclear power plant. However, today it is not nuclear power that
acts as direct competitor. The competition is a combination of gas and solar
energy that puts out maybe a third of the CO2 the coal plant puts out. They
are a lot cheaper than nuclear power. It seems that in the US right now the
coal plant cannot compete with the natural gas fired power plant. At best they
are at parity, at worst the coal plants are running on borrowed time. So how
could the coal plant possibly compete, if it had to put away twice as much CO2
as the gas fired power plant? Therefore, the demand for scrubbing away the
difference to a natural gas plant would kill the coal plant, at least in the
US. In other countries, the comparison may not be so straight forward, because
natural gas is often more expensive. If gas fetches a higher price than in
the US, there remains a residual cost of CO2, at which the coal plant may stay
competitive. As a rough rule of thumb the gas plant makes a pound of CO2 per
kWh, the coal plant makes nearly a kilogram, or about 500 g more. Assuming the
same carbon cost for coal and gas, the coal plant spends an extra half penny
per kWh for every $10 per ton of CO2. If the gas plant pays a premium for the
gas, at 40% efficiency, one dollar extra per MMBTU would add 0.85 cents to the
price of a kWh. Every dollar of a premium for a MMBTU of natural gas would
give coal the ability to absorb $17 per ton of CO2 without losing
competitiveness. The premium varies, but could be a few dollars. Where coal
is cheap and gas is very expensive, there may be a niche for retrofitting.
However, this assumes that both coal and gas get retrofitted and nothing else
is on the horizon. If coal retrofits compete with new gas plants, the
discussion becomes much more complicated. Then you should compare coal
electricity to the dispatch price of the new competitor. And the coal dispatch
price goes up at about 1 cent per kWh for every $10 you pay for a ton of CO2.
Also, coal does not have a constant dispatch price. It effectively competes
against a 24 hour price average, because the plant takes time to ramp up or
down. What will likely stop coal is intermittent supply of PV at a price that
undercuts coal electricity during daylight hours. If none of that happens,
there is still the very real possibility that advanced coal plants that are
more efficient and smarter designs will outcompete the old retrofits. So, I
don’t see much room for retrofitting, and we may have to face the reality that
most of the old plants are stranded assets the moment people take CO2 emissions
seriously. Before people take CO2 seriously, you can’t afford the retrofit
anyhow, and they either make money, or they get pushed out by combinations of
renewable energy and gas. Making renewables cheaper is therefore a great
strategy to reduce CO2 emissions. Lastly, if we really hit 5K warming, having
DAC is absolutely critical, because otherwise we will live with a dangerous
climate for a very long time. To summarize, I believe we are wasting our time
on fixing old coal plants. They will not compete with all the other options
available. I don’t rule out different coal plant designs that have an easier
time to collect their CO2, but given the current state of renewable and gas
energy, it will be an uphill battle for such plants to enter the market. The
existing fleet is doomed with or without climate change. Climate change will
accelerate the process. If your goal is to stop at 2K warming, focus on
renewable energy and DAC because you can’t do without it. If you worry about 5
degree warming, try to make coal obsolete before it runs out its natural life
time without a specific focus on CO2. Encourage people to take a path of
maximum CO2 reductions. This is not the path of flue gas scrubbing, because it
is simply too expensive to scrub an inefficient power plant. In the first case
of 2K time frame, today’s coal plants are going to be stranded assets, in the
second case, they may serve out their life time, but they are still in danger
of being outcompeted by other technologies. If gas prices stay low in the US
and start dropping elsewhere, old coal plants do not stand a chance (even
though coal per unit of energy is still much cheaper than gas). Once PV reaches
less than 3 cent per kWh of levelized cost, it is below the marginal cost of
most coal plants (and natural gas plants), and thus will take on market share
against coal, unless governments actively protect coal against the best
interests of their citizens even without their interest in a decent climate. PV
will be supplemented by flexible natural gas not old-fashioned coal. I also
believe that we are at or very close to this tipping point. Klaus From:
"Robert H. Socolow" <[email protected]>
Date: Friday, August 25, 2017 at 07:57
To: Klaus Lackner <[email protected]>, Peter Eisenberger
<[email protected]>, Greg Rau <[email protected]>
Cc: Geoengineering <geoengineering@googlegroups. com>, "[email protected]"
<[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [geo] The influence of learning about (CDR) on support for
mitigation policies Klaus: You formulate the problem well. The question,
however, is what “the long run” means. When will we run out of “old” coal
plants? Certainly not before we stop building new coal plants. And “we” is not
the U.S. The argument for CCS is that coal-plant construction has hardly abated
yet. Steve Davis’s and my article on “committed emissions” in Environmental
Research Letters is now a couple of years old, but at least as of then the
number of new coal plants built each year globally was monotonically
increasing. As you know, I am not optimistic that CCS can be married to new
coal, because neither the environmentalists nor the coal industry will support
it. But there are good arguments for trying to make the marriage happen. Buying
down the costs of CCS is a fool’s errand only if the nations of the world
actually are firmly committed to a dramatic reduction in the rate of arrival of
climate change, rather than only saying that they are. I advocate mixing
worst-case thinking into an optimist’s brew. My view hasn’t changed that
avoiding five degrees is the highest priority task, and getting to two rather
than three is next. The progress over the past decade with wind and solar is
astonishing, and if similar progress can be achieved with storage and system
innovation (including demand management), coal may really be over. We need to
pay attention to choices made by India and its neighbors, as well as by Africa,
over at least the next decade and put priority on R&D and policy that will tip
the scales. Moreover, If storage and system innovation arrive slowly, wind and
solar will penetrate more quickly in concert with natural gas, which will
continue to assure dispatchability as it does now, and then the marriage of CCS
with natural gas will become important. In short, it is dangerous to pretend
that it’s already OK to devote our entire attention to two degrees. The
education our energy analysis community has received regarding CCS over the
past decade extends to DAC as well. The storage part was initially essentially
too cheap to meter. It is now regarded as formidable. If there is an end run,
for example based on CO2 reuse as fiber, then that makes CCS for coal less
unattractive as well. (Fiber will come from coal before it comes from air,
won’t it?) In short, I recommend caution before joining advocacy of DAC and
denigration of CCS. They are synergistic campaigns, both facing steep uphill
climbs and to a considerable extent for the same reasons. Rob From:
geoengineering@googlegroups. com [mailto:geoengineering@ googlegroups.com]On
Behalf Of Klaus Lackner
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2017 8:14 PM
To: [email protected]; Greg Rau
Cc: Geoengineering; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [geo] The influence of learning about (CDR) on support for
mitigation policies Let me phrase the critical part of Peter’s argument
slightly differently.
You should do things with future, because learning here matters. If you build
solar energy, it will get cheaper and cheaper over time. The same is true for
DAC. It is even true for retrofitting old cold plants, but then you know you
run out of old coal plants and all the learning was for naught. If you had
picked another clean energy source with long term potential that would be fine,
because it would have gotten cheaper, and you can’t know to begin with which of
the different options will win. But you picked something that you know can’t
compete in the long run and is going to be phased out. You learned a dying
art. If the owners of coal plants find it competitive to fix the plant, let
them do it. But there is no good reason to spend public money on that support.
Klaus From: <geoengineering@googlegroups. com> on behalf of Peter
Eisenberger <[email protected]>
Reply-To: Peter Eisenberger <[email protected]>
Date: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 at 15:56
To: Greg Rau <[email protected]>
Cc: Geoengineering <geoengineering@googlegroups. com>, "[email protected]"
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [geo] The influence of learning about (CDR) on support for
mitigation policies Hi Greg , Just for a moment of truth- free of moral
hazards and climate change politics 1 Emissions reductions through capturing
and storing CO2 cannot solve the climate problem alone (and cost too much )2
CDR can solve the problem alone -it is just more difficult without emissions
reductions 3 While it is true that in the short term an emission reduction
from a plant already operating is equivalent to a CDR reduction of the same
size one can most effectively reduce emissions by switching to renewables 4
Now the tricky point is that any technology has a practical limit of how fast
it can be implemented -so lets use a doubling of capacity every two years - we
know that experience curves result in cost reductions with installed capacity 5
So if one wanted to achieve the paris targets as fast as possible one would
invest in renewables and in CDR (DAC) and not spend a penny on emissions
reductions which in reducing the rate (the opprotunity cost of emissions
reductions)on would be slowing down the other two deployments increasing the
time it would take for both renewables and CDR to reach the scale needed -
because the last doublings ( when all the factories making CDR and renewable
will quickly make up for the increased emmissions from existing plants
-alternatively if one was to focus first on emissions reductions and then on
the other two that would be the longest time to reach the capacities needed.
This could easily be modeled but the key is the positive feedback created by
building plants which results in enhanced rate ( new installations per year
because of lower costs and earlier establishment of mass production
capability ) make the opportunity cost of investing in emmissions reductions
that will eventually end so large they are not worth doing . In simpler terms
one does not ususally invest in solutions that cannot solve the problem if one
has available approaches that do . I believe this logic is solid . The reason
is has not been widely if at all accepted is because clean coal got started in
an era where we mistakenly( Socolow and Pacala) thought that they together
with renewables and other things (eg conservation , efficiency etc ) could
solve te climate problem . Lots of vested interests exist(DOE in particular)
that do not want to admit that all their effort was in a dry hole so to speak.
So my position is if we are serious about the climate threat we should all
focus on renewable energy and CDR and I believe of course (which I want others
to evaluate) that DAC followed by use of the carbon that stores it is the CDR
technology that can scale and offers a low cost solution because the co2 makes
money . The other approach I would support investigating is enhancd weathering
and of course fusion . On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 11:14 AM, Greg Rau
<[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks, Peter. Just to amplify, the IPCC states that to stay below 2degC
warming and esp below 1.5degC warming, both emissions reduction and CDR are
required, not either/or. So how about the concept that emissions reduction
presents a "moral hazard" to (required) CDR development? In any case, if even
thinking about CDR (let alone doing it) is perceived by humans as a threat to
emissions reduction (Campbell-Arvai et al., 2017), it's game over. We have to
do both. I seriously doubt that humans are truly incapable of doing 2 things
at once, but if they are we're toast (IPCC).Greg From: Peter Eisenberger
<[email protected]>
To: Andrew Lockley <[email protected]>
Cc: geoengineering <geoengineering@googlegroups. com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 1:40 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] The influence of learning about (CDR) on support for
mitigation policies This line of reasoning is logically flawed and is one of
the best examples of how the role of CDR is misunderstood and distorted by
others who have an anti technology orientation that pervaded the original
environmental movement. It is logically flawed because it is normal for people
to react to news that a new solution exists, CDR ,to a problem they thought
they could solve by renewable energy, emissions reductions and conservation .
The 2014 IPCC report confirmed what many knew that those processes are not
adequate for avoiding a climate disaster and that CDR is needed. So switching
ones emphasis to CDR solution that can solve the problem from ones that cannot
makes sense- to not change ones emphasis is illogical. The original approach
has its origins in the original environmental movement in which renewable
energy , emissions reductions ,and energy conservation were the central tenets.
The latter two garnered the support of the people who believe industrialization
and human consumption is the real problem and want us to change. The two are
combined in the moral hazard argument - eg CDR will reduce our commitment to
the previous plan and will also be a technological fix that will argue against
the fundamental tenet of the early environmental supporters - human development
has to harm the environment so we have to reduce our footprint to zero. On
Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 11:59 PM, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> wrote:
Poster's note: I'm working in this field, and the divide between liberals and
conservatives is discussed in my paper. journals.sagepub.com/ doi/full/10.1177/
1461452916659830 Climatic ChangeAugust 2017 , Volume 143, Issue 3–4, pp 321–336
The influence of learning about carbon dioxide removal (CDR) on support for
mitigation policies
· Authors· Authors and affiliations· Victoria
Campbell-ArvaiEmail author· P. Sol Hart· Kaitlin T. Raimi·
Kimberly S. Wolske· o · o · o · o o 1. 1.2. 2.3. 3.4. 4.5.
5.ArticleFirst Online: 28 July 2017· 44Shares · 201Downloads
Abstract
A wide range of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies has been proposed to
address climate change. As most CDR strategies are unfamiliar to the public, it
is unknown how increased media and policy attention on CDR might affect public
sentiment about climate change. On the one hand, CDR poses a potential moral
hazard: if people perceive that CDR solves climate change, they may be less
likely to support efforts to reduce carbon emissions. On the other hand, the
need for CDR may increase the perceived severity of climate change and, thus,
increase support for other types of mitigation. Using an online survey of US
adults (N = 984), we tested these competing hypotheses by exposing participants
to information about different forms of CDR. We find that learning about
certain CDR strategies indirectly reduces support for mitigation policies by
reducing the perceived threat of climate change. This was found to be true for
participants who read about CDR in general (without mention of specific
strategies), bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or direct air capture.
Furthermore, this risk compensation pattern was more pronounced among political
conservatives than liberals—although in some cases, was partially offset by
positive direct effects. Learning about reforestation, by contrast, had no
indirect effects on mitigation support through perceived threat but was found
to directly increase support among conservatives. The results suggest caution
is warranted when promoting technological fixes to climate change, like CDR, as
some forms may further dampen support for climate change action among the
unengaged.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10584-017-2005-1 ) contains
supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.--
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