Until we grasp that energy security (access, abundance, affordability, stability) is a political and economic *prerequisite* for climate measures we will endlessly fail. There will be situations where those objectives align, but more often they will be in tension and difficult or expensive trade-offs necessary. Much climate activism (and academia) believes it is all one big win.
The IPCC continues to discuss matters in terms of a hypothetical global average temperature. They have a 1.5 C limit and a 2.0 C limit. These numbers spring forth in their documents from an unknown source. But you can do this: From before the industrial revolution to 2015, an estimated 1,540 Gt of CO2 was emitted, causing an estimated temperature rise of 1.15 C, so each Gt CO2 produces a temperature rise of 0.000745 C. For the future beyond 2015 one can take cumulative CO2 Gt emitted beyond 2015 and multiply it by 0.000745 to get the additional temperature rise beyond 2015 after the 1.15 C rise to 2015. These estimates of delta-T are hypothetical. The real data is Gt of CO2 emitted and that is what should be controlled.
I am confused about coal. I probably didn't understand. You seemed to say that all plans to reduce total emissions quietly included increases in use of coal. But then you seemed to say that was a good thing because it provided more room for improvement? Kinda like a baseball player in a slump who has more room for improvement of his batting average?
I was at the Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP) conference in New Orleans last week. A German steelmaker had a booth at the trade show claiming they sold only "green" steel, made sustainably. I asked the pretty model in the booth to explain how that was done; she didn't know. She snagged a German engineer for help. He said they only do electric arc melted steel. Well and good, but then I asked him where the electricity came from. He said it "could be" from renewable sources. I cross-examined him further until he finally admitted that the grid they take their power from makes electricity by burning brown coal in boilers to spin the turbines. Burning brown coal to make t "green" steel? There is a lot of snake oil out in the marketplace these days posing as "green" products.
Sigh - a rethink of climate policy? It must surely be crystal clear by now that those dreaming up and promoting “climate policy” are not the least bit interested in thinking, an act of heresy in their worldview. Dogma and thought play nicely with one another….
Roger, thank you for this important article. In 2011, the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) was tasked by the California Energy Commission to determine the most cost-effective way to decarbonize the California power grid. (The CCST is California's analog of the National Academy of Sciences.) After the first two reports were issued, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) was needlessly shut down at the end of January, 2012 instead of being repaired. SONGS majority owner SCE mismanaged a routine service operation that was properly completed at the state's other zero-emission nuclear power plant operator in 2008 and 2009.
"California’s Energy Future: The View to 2050" Release Date: May 24, 2011 | Last Updated Date: February 19, 2015 https://tinyurl.com/CCST-Nuclear-1
... Nuclear power can provide constant, reliable emission-free energy with a much lower and more easily met requirement for load balancing. Roughly 30 new nuclear power plants could provide two-thirds of California’s electric power in 2050. ....
"California’s Energy Future – Powering California with Nuclear Energy" Release Date: July 1, 2011 | Last Updated Date: February 19, https://tinyurl.com/CCST-Nuclear-2
... Jane C.S. Long, associate director at large for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and co-chair of the California’s Energy Future study. Population growth and energy demand will eventually force a decision on California’s energy strategy, especially with the requirement for drastic reduction in emissions. “By 2050, California’s population is expected to rise to 55 million people. That increase, accompanied by economic growth, will likely require a doubling in electricity production, but with virtually no emissions, to meet state goals,” says Jane Long. “That is why nuclear power could prove one important option for meeting those strict and necessary standards.”...
Since these CCST reports were issued, California's power rates have skyrocketed. The state has added the greatest amount of solar of any U.S. state and has a huge quantity of wind generation. With the substantial costs for firming these inherently intermittent generation means, the electricity rate increase is unsurprising. Special interests are now promoting huge experimental floating offshore wind turbines which will harm wildlife, including whales. If approved, California power rates will climb even higher. Increasing solar and wind penetration also caused skyrocketing power rates in Germany and many other locations.
Independent nonprofit Californians for Green Nuclear Power https://CGNP.org led the fight since 2013 for Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) extended operations beyond 2025. DCPP now will run at least until 2030. DCPP typically undercuts the cost of California natural gas fired generation and should show decreased costs between 2025-2030 as DCPP has been essentially fully paid for by California ratepayers.
Examining California's annual consumption of natural gas to generate electricity shows no downward trend. (This was the alleged goal of expending tens of billions of dollars to install massive amounts of solar and wind generation. ) http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3045ca2a.htm (The 2023 data will be released on 3/31/24 but the 2023 monthly data has already been released.) In 2022, 642,745 MMcf of natural gas was consumed. The 2023 monthly sum is 635,259 MMcf, a negligible decline with respect to the massive quantity of solar and wind. California continues to import the greatest amount of power, roughly 100 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year. (1 TWh = 1 billion kilowatt-hours.) Some of those power imports come from Berkshire Hathaway's (BHE's) PacifiCorp subsidiary.
PacifiCorp operates a fleet of mostly coal-fired power plants with many located in Wyoming, the number 1 coal-producing state in the nation. PacifiCorp was recently distinguished as the firm with the fifth-highest 2023 California lobbying expenditures, though the firm has a negligible retail footprint in the state. Two BHE subsidiaries have sold more than $1.1 billion of electric power mostly to California since November 2014 via the blandly-named Western Energy Imbalance Market. CGNP believes maintaining and growing California's coal-fired electricity imports is the business objective of PacifiCorp's gargantuan lobbying expenditures.
CGNP has been sharply critical of PacifiCorp's business practices before the CPUC. We believe that was connected with the CPUC arbitrarily and capriciously zeroing out CGNP's recent $153K request for intervenor compensation. (PacifiCorp expended $2,541,794.12 directly lobbying the CPUC during the past five years. PacifiCorp outspent the much larger PG&E by over $1/4 million during the same period.)
An article recently released by the U.K. - based Eigen Values shows how subsidy-seekers have dramatically increased U.K. power prices: "Offshore Wind: Follow the Money -
UK billpayers subsidising overseas investors and getting expensive, unreliable energy in return"
The U.K. schemes have different names in the U.S., but the apparent objective is to saddle U.K. ratepayers with very expensive power generation means, allegedly to benefit the climate.
However, both in California and in the U.K. power sector emissions have not decreased in proportion to the massive investment of tens of billions of dollars (or pounds.) As Roger Pielke, Jr. suggests in this essay, a critical examination of both the "climate problem" and aggressively-promoted "climate solutions" is long overdue. If those billions in California or the U.K. had been spent since 2011 on nuclear power generation, ratepayers and the environment would have been the beneficiaries. Similarly, Germany should restart its nuclear power fleet.
I'm at the AFPM annual meeting in Houston where a speaker pointed out that both India and China have made significant commitments to EV use, but they expect to charge those vehicles with electricity produced at coal-fired power plants, coal being cheapest, most abundant energy resource in both countries. Maybe some of these high coal use baselines aren't so far fetched. If I recall, the lifecycle carbon emissions of EVs aren't much better than those of ICEs. If you charge the EVs with coal-fired electricity, the only reduction you appear to get is in everyone's standard of living, not CO2. CO2 emissions go up.
Voltaire once wrote, "If you want to dispute with me, first define your terms." I would like to hear a clear definition of what "equity" means in terms of climate policy and energy policy. I'm guessing it does NOT mean the value of your house minus the outstanding mortgage balance. I'm also guessing it does not mean the common stocks in your brokerage account. Kamala Harris once said equity means "we all come out the same." Is that what climate policy "equity" means? We divide global yearly energy consumption by the world's population, and each soul gets that amount of energy to consume and no more? Somebody tell me what equity means in this context.
"Time is the friend of truth." Hartwell Paper redux. Many dissertations could be written about why this reasonable and pragmatic point of view was not listened to.
"The Paper therefore proposes that the organising principle of our effort should be the
raising up of human dignity via three overarching objectives: ensuring energy access for
all; ensuring that we develop in a manner that does not undermine the essential
functioning of the Earth system; ensuring that our societies are adequately equipped to
withstand the risks and dangers that come from all the vagaries of climate, whatever
Vaclav Smil claims: "... small relative decline in the share of fossil fuel in the world’s primary energy consumption—from nearly 86 percent in 1997 to about 82 percent in 2022..."
That is an erroneous statement. In actual fact it is much worse than that. The share of fossil fuel was actually 86.5% in 1997, 86.7% for combustion fuels, which are the carbon emitters. In 2022 it was 89.8%, 90.6% for combustion fuels. So we have gone backwards, both proportionally & absolutely, since Kyoto.
Smil is using BP data. They invented this scam of multiplying wind & solar by 2.6X for primary energy to make them look far higher than they really are while dividing nuclear by 1.2X making it look lower than it really is. You need to go to the IEA to get the correct data. Now why does BP want to hype up wind & solar while downplaying nuclear? Suspicious or what?
"Climate policy targets and timetables need revisiting as the Paris Agreement targets are infeasible;"
Perhaps, many climate-change-alarmed NGOs are no longer concerned about the climate, societal well-being, whether any of the climate goals are achievable, and, now, much more concerned with donations and power.
Thank you Roger for another great article. Please keep an eye on bioenergy numbers. Farmers like growing GMO corn, soybeans, canola. As long as glyphosate keeps working, these crops are easy to grow. Bioenergy production helps increase the profitability of these crops. Meanwhile, we keep degrading the environment including messing up water tables, reducing wildlife, etc. Why? To pretend that we can make a meaningful decrease in fossil fuel consumption. I guess that is the answer. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0604600103 Interesting paper. It mentions but does not put an economic figure on the environmental and social costs of monoculture farming versus more biodiversity. Where are car manufacturers going to make car ads if we rip up all the ranchland and make it into farmland?
Excellent post and very interesting. This entire discussion should be described as Energy Policy and not as Climate Policy. In order to support human flourishing globally, energy should be affordable, scalable, and managed to protect our environment from degradation.
I laugh hysterically at any notion of ever reaching an international agreement of what constitutes an ideal global climate, and then having the capacity to achieve it. It’s an absurdity piled on a fallacy of paradoxical nonsense. Humanity is incapable of controlling global climate. It’s a fool’s errand.
The Hedgehog (who knows one great thing) defines victory in terms of temperature. The Fox (who knows many things) defines victory in terms of quality of life. In Covid, the Hedgehogs defined victory in terms of cases of covid, vaccinations ... The Foxes, again, were focused on lives, not just quantity but quality. Too damned many Hedgehogs, too few Foxes!
Roger:
Excellent post! And thx for the links.
"...much broader base on models, methods..." should likely be "of" rather than "on".
I’d add a fourth paper to your list: Daniel Yergin, The Return of Energy Security, S&P Global, February 2024
https://www.spglobal.com/en/research-insights/featured/special-editorial/look-forward/the-return-of-energy-security
Until we grasp that energy security (access, abundance, affordability, stability) is a political and economic *prerequisite* for climate measures we will endlessly fail. There will be situations where those objectives align, but more often they will be in tension and difficult or expensive trade-offs necessary. Much climate activism (and academia) believes it is all one big win.
The IPCC continues to discuss matters in terms of a hypothetical global average temperature. They have a 1.5 C limit and a 2.0 C limit. These numbers spring forth in their documents from an unknown source. But you can do this: From before the industrial revolution to 2015, an estimated 1,540 Gt of CO2 was emitted, causing an estimated temperature rise of 1.15 C, so each Gt CO2 produces a temperature rise of 0.000745 C. For the future beyond 2015 one can take cumulative CO2 Gt emitted beyond 2015 and multiply it by 0.000745 to get the additional temperature rise beyond 2015 after the 1.15 C rise to 2015. These estimates of delta-T are hypothetical. The real data is Gt of CO2 emitted and that is what should be controlled.
I am confused about coal. I probably didn't understand. You seemed to say that all plans to reduce total emissions quietly included increases in use of coal. But then you seemed to say that was a good thing because it provided more room for improvement? Kinda like a baseball player in a slump who has more room for improvement of his batting average?
I was at the Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP) conference in New Orleans last week. A German steelmaker had a booth at the trade show claiming they sold only "green" steel, made sustainably. I asked the pretty model in the booth to explain how that was done; she didn't know. She snagged a German engineer for help. He said they only do electric arc melted steel. Well and good, but then I asked him where the electricity came from. He said it "could be" from renewable sources. I cross-examined him further until he finally admitted that the grid they take their power from makes electricity by burning brown coal in boilers to spin the turbines. Burning brown coal to make t "green" steel? There is a lot of snake oil out in the marketplace these days posing as "green" products.
Sigh - a rethink of climate policy? It must surely be crystal clear by now that those dreaming up and promoting “climate policy” are not the least bit interested in thinking, an act of heresy in their worldview. Dogma and thought play nicely with one another….
Roger, thank you for this important article. In 2011, the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) was tasked by the California Energy Commission to determine the most cost-effective way to decarbonize the California power grid. (The CCST is California's analog of the National Academy of Sciences.) After the first two reports were issued, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) was needlessly shut down at the end of January, 2012 instead of being repaired. SONGS majority owner SCE mismanaged a routine service operation that was properly completed at the state's other zero-emission nuclear power plant operator in 2008 and 2009.
"California’s Energy Future: The View to 2050" Release Date: May 24, 2011 | Last Updated Date: February 19, 2015 https://tinyurl.com/CCST-Nuclear-1
... Nuclear power can provide constant, reliable emission-free energy with a much lower and more easily met requirement for load balancing. Roughly 30 new nuclear power plants could provide two-thirds of California’s electric power in 2050. ....
"California’s Energy Future – Powering California with Nuclear Energy" Release Date: July 1, 2011 | Last Updated Date: February 19, https://tinyurl.com/CCST-Nuclear-2
... Jane C.S. Long, associate director at large for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and co-chair of the California’s Energy Future study. Population growth and energy demand will eventually force a decision on California’s energy strategy, especially with the requirement for drastic reduction in emissions. “By 2050, California’s population is expected to rise to 55 million people. That increase, accompanied by economic growth, will likely require a doubling in electricity production, but with virtually no emissions, to meet state goals,” says Jane Long. “That is why nuclear power could prove one important option for meeting those strict and necessary standards.”...
"CCST Report on Nuclear Power in California’s 2050 Energy Mix," Burton Richter, Ph.D. (Nobel Laureate), July 15, 2011, https://ccst.us/wp-content/uploads/071511richter.pdf
Since these CCST reports were issued, California's power rates have skyrocketed. The state has added the greatest amount of solar of any U.S. state and has a huge quantity of wind generation. With the substantial costs for firming these inherently intermittent generation means, the electricity rate increase is unsurprising. Special interests are now promoting huge experimental floating offshore wind turbines which will harm wildlife, including whales. If approved, California power rates will climb even higher. Increasing solar and wind penetration also caused skyrocketing power rates in Germany and many other locations.
Independent nonprofit Californians for Green Nuclear Power https://CGNP.org led the fight since 2013 for Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) extended operations beyond 2025. DCPP now will run at least until 2030. DCPP typically undercuts the cost of California natural gas fired generation and should show decreased costs between 2025-2030 as DCPP has been essentially fully paid for by California ratepayers.
Examining California's annual consumption of natural gas to generate electricity shows no downward trend. (This was the alleged goal of expending tens of billions of dollars to install massive amounts of solar and wind generation. ) http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3045ca2a.htm (The 2023 data will be released on 3/31/24 but the 2023 monthly data has already been released.) In 2022, 642,745 MMcf of natural gas was consumed. The 2023 monthly sum is 635,259 MMcf, a negligible decline with respect to the massive quantity of solar and wind. California continues to import the greatest amount of power, roughly 100 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year. (1 TWh = 1 billion kilowatt-hours.) Some of those power imports come from Berkshire Hathaway's (BHE's) PacifiCorp subsidiary.
PacifiCorp operates a fleet of mostly coal-fired power plants with many located in Wyoming, the number 1 coal-producing state in the nation. PacifiCorp was recently distinguished as the firm with the fifth-highest 2023 California lobbying expenditures, though the firm has a negligible retail footprint in the state. Two BHE subsidiaries have sold more than $1.1 billion of electric power mostly to California since November 2014 via the blandly-named Western Energy Imbalance Market. CGNP believes maintaining and growing California's coal-fired electricity imports is the business objective of PacifiCorp's gargantuan lobbying expenditures.
CGNP has been sharply critical of PacifiCorp's business practices before the CPUC. We believe that was connected with the CPUC arbitrarily and capriciously zeroing out CGNP's recent $153K request for intervenor compensation. (PacifiCorp expended $2,541,794.12 directly lobbying the CPUC during the past five years. PacifiCorp outspent the much larger PG&E by over $1/4 million during the same period.)
An article recently released by the U.K. - based Eigen Values shows how subsidy-seekers have dramatically increased U.K. power prices: "Offshore Wind: Follow the Money -
UK billpayers subsidising overseas investors and getting expensive, unreliable energy in return"
David Turver, March 9, 2024 https://davidturver.substack.com/p/offshore-wind-follow-the-money
The U.K. schemes have different names in the U.S., but the apparent objective is to saddle U.K. ratepayers with very expensive power generation means, allegedly to benefit the climate.
However, both in California and in the U.K. power sector emissions have not decreased in proportion to the massive investment of tens of billions of dollars (or pounds.) As Roger Pielke, Jr. suggests in this essay, a critical examination of both the "climate problem" and aggressively-promoted "climate solutions" is long overdue. If those billions in California or the U.K. had been spent since 2011 on nuclear power generation, ratepayers and the environment would have been the beneficiaries. Similarly, Germany should restart its nuclear power fleet.
I'm at the AFPM annual meeting in Houston where a speaker pointed out that both India and China have made significant commitments to EV use, but they expect to charge those vehicles with electricity produced at coal-fired power plants, coal being cheapest, most abundant energy resource in both countries. Maybe some of these high coal use baselines aren't so far fetched. If I recall, the lifecycle carbon emissions of EVs aren't much better than those of ICEs. If you charge the EVs with coal-fired electricity, the only reduction you appear to get is in everyone's standard of living, not CO2. CO2 emissions go up.
Voltaire once wrote, "If you want to dispute with me, first define your terms." I would like to hear a clear definition of what "equity" means in terms of climate policy and energy policy. I'm guessing it does NOT mean the value of your house minus the outstanding mortgage balance. I'm also guessing it does not mean the common stocks in your brokerage account. Kamala Harris once said equity means "we all come out the same." Is that what climate policy "equity" means? We divide global yearly energy consumption by the world's population, and each soul gets that amount of energy to consume and no more? Somebody tell me what equity means in this context.
"Time is the friend of truth." Hartwell Paper redux. Many dissertations could be written about why this reasonable and pragmatic point of view was not listened to.
"The Paper therefore proposes that the organising principle of our effort should be the
raising up of human dignity via three overarching objectives: ensuring energy access for
all; ensuring that we develop in a manner that does not undermine the essential
functioning of the Earth system; ensuring that our societies are adequately equipped to
withstand the risks and dangers that come from all the vagaries of climate, whatever
their cause may be."
Vaclav Smil claims: "... small relative decline in the share of fossil fuel in the world’s primary energy consumption—from nearly 86 percent in 1997 to about 82 percent in 2022..."
That is an erroneous statement. In actual fact it is much worse than that. The share of fossil fuel was actually 86.5% in 1997, 86.7% for combustion fuels, which are the carbon emitters. In 2022 it was 89.8%, 90.6% for combustion fuels. So we have gone backwards, both proportionally & absolutely, since Kyoto.
Smil is using BP data. They invented this scam of multiplying wind & solar by 2.6X for primary energy to make them look far higher than they really are while dividing nuclear by 1.2X making it look lower than it really is. You need to go to the IEA to get the correct data. Now why does BP want to hype up wind & solar while downplaying nuclear? Suspicious or what?
Sounds like climate scenarios need a DEI policy 😛
"Climate policy targets and timetables need revisiting as the Paris Agreement targets are infeasible;"
Perhaps, many climate-change-alarmed NGOs are no longer concerned about the climate, societal well-being, whether any of the climate goals are achievable, and, now, much more concerned with donations and power.
Thank you Roger for another great article. Please keep an eye on bioenergy numbers. Farmers like growing GMO corn, soybeans, canola. As long as glyphosate keeps working, these crops are easy to grow. Bioenergy production helps increase the profitability of these crops. Meanwhile, we keep degrading the environment including messing up water tables, reducing wildlife, etc. Why? To pretend that we can make a meaningful decrease in fossil fuel consumption. I guess that is the answer. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0604600103 Interesting paper. It mentions but does not put an economic figure on the environmental and social costs of monoculture farming versus more biodiversity. Where are car manufacturers going to make car ads if we rip up all the ranchland and make it into farmland?
Excellent post and very interesting. This entire discussion should be described as Energy Policy and not as Climate Policy. In order to support human flourishing globally, energy should be affordable, scalable, and managed to protect our environment from degradation.
I laugh hysterically at any notion of ever reaching an international agreement of what constitutes an ideal global climate, and then having the capacity to achieve it. It’s an absurdity piled on a fallacy of paradoxical nonsense. Humanity is incapable of controlling global climate. It’s a fool’s errand.
The Hedgehog (who knows one great thing) defines victory in terms of temperature. The Fox (who knows many things) defines victory in terms of quality of life. In Covid, the Hedgehogs defined victory in terms of cases of covid, vaccinations ... The Foxes, again, were focused on lives, not just quantity but quality. Too damned many Hedgehogs, too few Foxes!