The Centennial Commemoration of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. II.

A Fable

Paris is sparing no extravagance for the centennial celebration of the 2015 climate agreement, themed “Paris 2115”.  The Eiffel Tower is decked out with the newest efficient lighting fixtures, highlighting the sky blue of the United Nations flag, intermingled with the Tricouleur, the red, white and blue of the French flag.  Laser light shows projecting these colors playfully pierce the air around its spire.

The Étoile and Arc de Triomphe are adorned with exotic vegetation brought from far reaches of the planet, symbols of the preservation of the environment resulting from one hundred years of sustainable climate policies resulting from the agreement.

The most striking aspect of the celebration is that several hundred thousand people from all around the world have descended on The City of Light, to mark the centennial of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreement limiting emissions of greenhouse gases.  The 2015 agreement enshrined the goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to under 2ºC (3.6ºF) above the preindustrial temperature, i.e., the temperature before humans began burning fossil fuels.  The agreement also included the more stringent goal of keeping the rise below 1.5ºC as a more ambitious option. 

Just under 200 nations, all the U.N.’s members, joined the agreement.  Now the member nations are celebrating, for they had in fact summoned their resources and achieved the more stringent goal.  This required that restraint and discipline be applied by each nation, each independently of, but in concert with, the constraints developed by every other nation.  The 2015 agreement made these constraints voluntary, nation by nation.  It is remarkable that the member nations all accepted the responsibility of fulfilling their pledges, with records and validation open for all to see.  Indeed, since the original 2015 pledges were deemed inadequate to attain this goal, the nations repeatedly reconvened every five years, and intensified their efforts by developing ever more stringent reduction pledges.  The centennial we are now celebrating honors these pledge extensions.  Without these extra efforts we could not have kept the global temperature from increasing as little as it has today.

How did this come about?  After all, the energy needed for industrialization and raising living standards in developing countries, obtained almost entirely from burning fossil fuels, had underpinned their headlong rush to economic growth for more than a century.  The fossil fuel industry was a significant fraction of the world economy, and the fuel companies exerted their considerable political power to maintain the status quo, extracting ever more fossil fuels each year.  This path, called “business-as-usual”, would have brought the world to an average temperature rise of about 4ºC, a truly devastating result.

Governments the world over, working in collaboration with the fossil fuel companies and other segments of the economy, transformed the world’s energy sector.  Governments and company managements, realizing the dangers of continuing along a business-as-usual path, transformed their political frameworks and business models.  The companies came to realize that there was profit to be gained by developing and deploying renewable energy sources, and redirected their development budgets accordingly.  New research and great economies of scale made solar and wind energy, for example, economical yet highly profitable.  Energy storage was optimized with new battery compositions and physical storage modes.  People began to see new beauty in renewable energy installations.  In the meanwhile, biotechnology researchers developed genetically modified crop plants that withstand the stresses of heat and drought more effectively than the old wild strains.  Research ingenuity also optimized yields of biofuels to provide all the needs of the growing airline industry.

Our land transportation has also been revolutionized.  Self-driving vehicles now navigate e-highways, minimizing the need for extra weight to protect us from crashes.  They are powered by newly developed highly efficient renewable energy sources.

Sadly, several small island nations that signed on to the agreement in 2015 no longer exist, because their islands were swallowed up by rising seas over the intervening one hundred years.  Already by 2015 sea level had been rising because, averaged over the seasons of the year, more ice melted from polar ice masses into the ocean than was deposited by fresh snow and ice.  Rising seas were already locked in by then.  Indeed, by 2015 ice loss had been accelerating because temperatures over the ice masses were rising rapidly.  Now as we fete the centennial, many coastal regions around the world have been lost to ocean inundation.

Pingali, Richard and Hailong met each other last night at the Korean pavilion.  Paris 2115 is organized around these centers, representing each nation of the UNFCCC agreement, all around the city.  Each one displays highlights of the environmental and sustainability contributions they have made in the past hundred years that brought us to this week’s celebration.  The three new friends are circulating among the pavilions, trying to take in as many as they can, from countries large and small. 

The celebration reaches its peak tomorrow, as major personalities from the UNFCCC and various nations speak about the significance of this occasion, and the way forward.  Of course these speeches will be streamed live as holographic displays in all the pavilions, so that all the celebrants can experience the immediacy of the presentations.

 

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The Paris Agreement reached in December 2015 represents major progress on the path to controlling worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.  All 197 U. N. member nations agreed to its terms.  This accomplishment is due in large part to departure from earlier attempts at negotiating a treaty involving imposing predetermined limits on emissions from each nation.  Instead the Paris Agreement solicits voluntary pledges from each which, once filed, are subject to review and verification by the U. N. 

Prior to the convening of the Paris meeting almost all nations had already submitted their pledges.  A scientific evaluation shows that those pledges are insufficiently ambitious to achieve the goal of keeping the global average temperature increase less than 2ºC during this century.  Climate model calculations by  Fawcett and coworkers (Science, 2015, Vol. 350, pp. 1168-1169) show that the current voluntary pledges will keep the annual

 

Actual (up to 2010) and projected annual rates of emission of CO₂ from energy and major industrial sources from 1990 to 2100.  The heavy lines are summary representations for four emissions scenarios.  Top to bottom these are the reference case of no emissions reduction policy in place; no reduction policy up to 2030, then a 2% per year reduction in emissions; implementation of only the current voluntary pledges through 2030, continued unchanged to 2100 (curve labeled INDCs); and the current voluntary pledges to 2030, then further reduction by at least 5% per year to 2100.  The individual thin lines are actual modeling runs repeated many times.  IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; AR5, Fifth Assessment Report issued 2013-4.

Source: Fawcett and coworkers, Science, 2015, Vol. 350, pp. 1168-1169; http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/350/6265/1168.full.pdf .

 

rate of CO₂ emissions level at their present rates up to 2100 (curve labeled INDCs in the graphic above).  Since these are annual rates, the emissions will continue to raise the total accumulated CO₂ level throughout this period, leading to a steady rise in global average temperature to 2100.  Only the lowest heavy blue curve shows a decreased rate of annual emissions after 2030, accomplished in the model by imposing a stringent reduction in annual emissions rate of 5% per year.  The accumulation of CO₂ in the atmosphere continues, admittedly at lower rates, throughout this period.  As a result the global average temperature will still continue rising from its present (unprecedented high) value at a slow but measurable pace.

The Paris negotiators recognized this deficiency, and included the intention in the Agreement to reconvene in five years to assess progress and to encourage updated pledges including more ambitious emission reductions from the member nations.  It also mentions explicitly the more stringent goal that reductions should in fact be ambitious enough to keep the increase in global average temperature below 1.5ºC.

Some nations and provinces around the world have already undertaken efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions. China’s pledge lays out increasing annual emissions until 2030, mainly from burning coal, then a reduction in that rate.  But the recent economic slowdown in that country appears already to be leading to lower emissions than anticipated.  As part of its pledge, China intends to expand pilot cap-and-trade limits on emissions in some of its cities to the nation as a whole.

Australia imposed a carbon pricing scheme in 2012, but it was repealed in 2014.  In addition Australia is now severely cutting back its spending on its respected government scientific research organization, including its climate science section.  This impedes the country’s and the world’s ability to track its greenhouse gases and temperatures.

The European Commission announced a plan in 2010 to reduce emissions by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.  Europe implemented a cap-and-trade Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) a decade ago as part of its participation in the Kyoto Protocol, the UNFCCC agreement preceding the Paris Agreement.  The ETS has had difficulties that are preventing it from achieving its full potential.

The U.S. federal government has been unable to enact laws to limit emissions because the majority party in one or both of the Congress’s chambers does not admit the need to address man-made global warming.  But President Obama has undertaken executive steps that will double fuel efficiency of the nation’s vehicles, and will increase the efficiency of electricity generation in electricity generation.  Independently, California and some other states have policies limiting emissions similar to the reduction intended by the European Commission.

In Canada, the province of British Columbia has had a revenue-neutral carbon tax in place since 2008.  Revenues collected from the tax are used to lower tax rates in other categories.  Use of fossil fuels has dropped with no effect on the province’s economy.

 

Conclusion

 

Implementation of the Paris Agreement of 2015 promises to turn our world from a warming disaster to a manageable, but palpably warmer, global environment.  But there are powerful political and commercial interests opposing the changes needed to stabilize the global climate.  Business models of large multinational energy companies need to change, such that they recognize that profits can be derived from producing renewable energy.  Deep-rooted psychological barriers also exist that resist our need to change our ways.  With good will and ambitious planning the fable represented by Paris 2115 may come to pass.
 © 2015 Henry Auer

The Centennial Commemoration of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement

A Fable

It was December 2115, the hundredth anniversary of the agreement to a climate treaty reached among all the members of the United Nations, in Paris.  The members of the Petrex extended family gathered to mark the occasion.  By that time, three to four generations after the event, the clan had grown considerably, and had established for itself a fully self-sufficient environment inside its terradome.  For the occasion the space was opulently fitted out with an artificial lake in which were moored several model oil rigs.  The pipe linking the rigs to shore ended in an internally illuminated fountain gurgling champagne.  Scattered about the artificially-turfed land areas were several working model oil wells erected in mud fields of black caviar, pumping dark chocolate and coffee liqueurs, and other reminders of the black gold that had started the Petrex fortune, more than one hundred years earlier.

Back then, the clan founder, Malvolio Petrex, chairman and chief executive officer of the largest oil company at the time, had come to realize the inconsistencies of his, and his company’s, position.  They were, at one and the same time, using all their financial power and political influence to perpetuate, indeed to expand, the use of the oil they extracted from the ground, while correctly realizing that their exploitative activities were worsening the global warming already well under way.  After all, the Paris agreement itself was reached in response to expert scientific findings, reported for at least the preceding twenty years, that burning oil and other fossil fuels, such as those his company and others were pulling from the ground, added irreversibly to the atmospheric burden of carbon dioxide, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Malvolio Petrex knew that global warming was going to get much worse in the coming years, because his company and others were continuing to produce fossil fuels at ever-increasing rates of growth, year after year.  After all, more and more energy was needed to fuel the demands of economies all over the world, being used to expand their economies and raise the poorest peoples of the world out of poverty. 

He wasn’t too worried about his own welfare, though.  Thanks to his immeasurable wealth, he already had peppered several secure estates around the world, in various climatic and ecological settings.  But as any other dynastic figure that we may encounter throughout history, he was concerned about the wellbeing of his progeny.  He knew that the travesties his business activities were creating would worsen after he was gone, impacting the lives and indeed the safety of his scions.  He understood that worsening warming would lead to economic and political unrest among the impoverished and others less well off than he because they would be suffering the harmful effects of warming: flooding in some regions; droughts, wildfires and famine in others; and inexorable sea level rise driving millions around the world from their traditional homes and livelihoods.

And so he embarked on a program to develop self-contained environments for himself and his family.  The environments would insulate his family from the unpleasantness of dealing with the effects of climate change by keeping the open atmosphere out, and the family’s living quarters and areas for amusing themselves in.  The first models were installed on the grounds of his existing estates, and were relatively modest. 

Now, one hundred years later, after many rounds of development and improvement, this Petrex estate was enveloped in its own protective terradome.  It was a large, fully enclosed environment covering almost one square mile, incorporating the estate’s mansion, its recreational areas, and fields producing much of its food needs.  The terradome insulated the estate from the worst “weird” climate and weather events brought on by the extreme warming that the world had attained by then, as well as keeping a portion of the sun’s warming light from penetrating to the land within it.  The Petrex family had practically no need to travel outside the terradome; it was almost entirely self-sufficient.

As a result, they were insulated as well from the harms and damages induced by the warmer climate that most of the peoples of the world were suffering.  Or maybe they knew and, just like Malvolio Petrex a hundred years earlier, chose to ignore it.  The population at large was subjected to far worse conditions than Petrex’s world had experienced one hundred years earlier: debilitating heat waves and droughts, intense storms bringing on severe flooding, encroaching oceans because of the severe degree of sea level rise, all brought on by the excess global warming that burning fossil fuels induced. 

By the time of the centennial anniversary the opportunity for effective action to combat global warming had long passed.

 

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President Obama delivered an annual State of the Union speech on January 28, 2014, as reported by this writer earlier.  He stated what is probably the most profound and basic motivation for attacking the problem of global warming:   

“Climate change is a fact.  And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.”  

Importantly, we know with practically complete certainty that the excess warming of the planet is due to humanity’s burning of fossil fuels to power our economies.  The President’s statement illuminates the core of our attitudes and behavior about global warming, namely, the strong desire we all feel to pass on to our children and further progeny a secure world not threatened by the consequences of our present environmental actions. 

Moral basis for climate action. President Obama laid down a forceful imperative, that of working to abate global warming for the welfare of our children and their children, and by inference, our future progeny whom we will never know. We can consider this the most powerful, fundamental driver for action against global warming. It is a principal motivation for the faithful, who consider that we are stewards of God’s creation, responsible for preserving its bounties for ourselves and our progeny. It is an important guiding principle for others as well who direct their actions to the betterment of the world and the lives of their fellow humans.

The effects of global warming pervade the entire earth.  Once fossil fuels are burned, the carbon dioxide they produce is distributed worldwide throughout the atmosphere.  The stronger greenhouse effect that results leads to unprecedented warming of the earth system, its air, water and land.  Indeed, heating is occurring about sixty to one hundred times faster than during any earlier warming or cooling interval uncovered in the geological record going back almost one million years.  The greenhouse effect warms the atmosphere, but over 90% of the excess heat enters the oceans.  It is stored there long-term and recirculates back to the atmosphere as ocean currents change. 

Warming affects all inhabitants of our planet, poor and rich, weak and powerful alike.  It is folly to think that those having wealth and exerting power can be insulated from its effects.  The Paris agreement opened the way, for the first time, for all peoples to make concerted efforts to minimize further warming of the planet.  We all must ensure that the agreement is implemented, and extended in the way it calls for.

 

© 2015 Henry Auer

President Obama’s Clean Power Plan to Reduce Emissions

The Administration’s Clean Power Plan will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electric power industry over the next fifteen years.

 

Global warming affects all humankind.  Changing weather patterns, consisting of greater and more frequent weather extremes have become more and more common in recent years and decades.  Around the world, extreme rains and floods, droughts and unprecedented sea level rise have occurred in ways that we are now accepting as being “new normals” of weather which humanity did not experience in earlier years.  While we cannot point to individual events as being caused by global warming, the frequency of occurrence and patterns around the world are all consistent with the predictions that global warming will worsen extremes of weather and climate going forward.  The warming arises because of humanity’s burning of fossil fuels for energy as well as from other human activities, not from any natural cycling of climate patterns.

Relative effectiveness of fossil fuels.  Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the principal greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.  The fossil fuels used to produce energy yield different amounts of heat per weight of CO₂ resulting from combustion.  This is a consequence of the intrinsic chemical properties of each fuel, and cannot be changed by engineering or ingenuity.  These differences are shown in this table: 

           Relative Emission Efficiency of Fuels  

Fuel	Relative amount of CO2 released per unit of heat obtained, compared to natural gas
Natural gas	1.00
Petroleum (fuel oil,  gasoline)	1.55-1.61
Coal	2.00-2.03

                     Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion

The table shows that burning coal produces twice as much CO₂ as does natural gas when burned for energy.  (Other references give slightly different numbers without affecting this overall conclusion.)  In other words, use of coal as a fuel, say, for generating electricity, releases twice as much CO₂ into the atmosphere as does burning natural gas to obtain the same amount of heat, i.e., to generate the same amount of electricity.  If humankind is concerned about minimizing the worsening of global warming, we would benefit greatly by reducing the use of all fossil fuels, and especially coal.
 

Coal demands of electric generation.  A typical coal-fired electricity generating plant has a power capacity in the megawatt (MW) range.  To have this capacity, it burns large amounts of coal.  The largest coal-fired plant in the U. S. is the Robert W. Scherer Power Plant in Juliette, Georgia .  When operating to capacity, the facility burns almost 1,300 tons of coal every hour, or 11 million tons a year.  The coal used at Scherer comes from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.  It is transported by train to the plant, a trip of 1,800 miles.  The coal arrives in trains 124 cars long; such a train can reach as long as two miles in length.  A picture of a coal train is shown here.

     http://tcktcktck.org/2014/02/coal-train-photo/

The Scherer facility consumes 3-5 such trainloads of coal every day.  When burned, this coal yields 27 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.  The facility has four separate generating units, each with a capacity of 880 MW.   So smaller facilities might use perhaps one-quarter, or one-half, for example, of the amount of coal that the Scherer plant uses. Overall, the U. S. has about 1,000 fossil fuel-fired generating plants, and, since many plants have more than one generator, a total of about 3,100 generating units that fall under the CPP.
 

The U. S. Clean Power Plan.  President Obama heralded the release of the Final Rule for the Administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) on August 3, 2015.  The proposed rule was released over one year earlier and is described here.  The CPP addresses greenhouse gas emissions, primarily CO₂, produced by electricity generation in the U. S.  Emissions from this sector of the energy economy are a main component of overall greenhouse gas emissions in the U. S.
 

Over 4.3 million comments from stakeholders and the public on the proposed rule were received by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), many of whose considerations were incorporated in the Final Rule. 
 

The CPP’s goal is to reduce emissions from electricity generation by 32% below the levels of 2005 by the year 2030.  Importantly, the plan does not dictate how these goals are to be met.  Rather, it recognizes that the features of each state’s generation infrastructure differ from one another.  As a result, the specific reduction goal for each state has been assigned differently to account for these distinctions.  In addition, each state is given the responsibility of devising its own specific plan for attaining its particular reduction goal.  Among the general paths to reducing emissions, the CPP names retrofitting existing power plants, eliminating noncompliant power plants, and installing renewable energy facilities.   Additionally, states can trade emission allowances among themselves to help attain their objectives.
 

Opposition to CPP.  Legislative and industrial opponents of the CPP began expressing their concerns as soon as the Final Rule was issued.  Here are some arguments being presented.
 

The CPP is illegal or even unconstitutional.  The Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency and others (2007) interpreted the Clean Air Act, originally passed in 1970, as including the authority to regulate CO₂ as an atmospheric pollutant if EPA found it to endanger the welfare of American citizens.  Following up on the Supreme Court’s decision, EPA did subsequently find that the gas threatens the health and welfare of Americans, and of our environment, in 2009.  As a result of this finding, EPA has the legal authority to regulate CO₂ emissions.
 

To the knowledge of this writer the question of the constitutionality of this rulemaking power is not being considered by the courts at this time.
 

Opponents have called the CPP a “War on Coal”.  In doing so they seek to place the burden of reorganization of the electricity generating industry on President Obama and his administration.  Use of coal in generating electricity has been declining for more than a decade, as has been the number of working coal miners.  A graphic representing the decreasing use of coal is shown here:

Comparison of the use of coal (blue bars) and natural gas (red bars) from 2002 to 2012. 
Source: http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/nat-gas-takes-market-share-coal.jpg?00cfb7

 

The graphic shows that the percent share of use of coal in electricity generation has been declining since well before President Obama took office in January 2009.  Perhaps opponents may wish to call this finding “Bush’s War on Coal” (not appropriate) or “Capitalism’s War on Coal”.  In fact the principal factor underlying the diminishing role of coal, and the increasing percent share of use of natural gas, is the growing availability of gas in the U. S. due to the increased use of hydraulic fracturing to produce it.  This has resulted in higher gas production and a lowering of its cost.  The increased availability of natural gas began during the administration of President George W. Bush. 
 

In spite of the increasing layoffs among Appalachian coal miners, the Congressional delegations from these areas appear not have their interests high on their agendas.  Only Rep. David McKinley, Republican of West Virginia, teaming with Rep. Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont (not a coal mining state), offered a bill for assistance to miners, in Sept. 2014.  Additional searching does not show that this initiative progressed further in Congress.  President Obama’s administration, however, granted $7.5 million in June 2014 to Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program Inc. to help retrain out-of-work Kentucky miners.   This action is not consistent with a supposed Administration “War on Coal”.

Clearly market forces expected in a capitalist economy are responsible for the declining share in the use of coal.  The CPP does not institutionalize a “War on Coal”, but in view of the profoundly higher rate of emission of CO₂ resulting from its use (see above), the Plan is likely to lead to further reductions in coal use.
 

The CPP will produce only an insignificant decrease in global emissions.  This writer heard this argument expressed on the National Public Radio program “Here & Now” on August 4, 2015.  Such statements are not supported by the facts.  The U. S. is a major global emitter of greenhouse gases, and the CPP alone has the potential of reducing U. S. emissions by almost 10%.  In addition, representatives from all United Nations members are convening in December 2015 to finalize a global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions from all members.  A rigorous stand by the U. S. at the domestic level will enhance its ability to obtain meaningful reductions from other nations.  This is a very important factor going forward.

Conclusions
 

Coal is a major fossil fuel used in electric power generation, but results in twice the greenhouse gas emissions per amount of heat generated than the other major fossil fuel, natural gas.  The Obama administration has issued its CPP which would reduce emissions by 32% below 2005 levels by 2030.  This is a significant emission reduction program.  Coupled with the Administration’s regulation to increase transportation fuel efficiency by almost a factor of two by 2025 it will have a major effect on the energy economy of the U. S.

© 2015 Henry Auer

President Obama Regrettably Approves Oil Drilling in the Arctic Ocean

The Obama administration granted conditional approval to Shell Oil Company to begin exploratory drilling in the Arctic Ocean off the North Slope of Alaska on May 11, 2015 .  In addition to generating grave misgivings about possible environmental damage from drilling accidents, this decision represents a major compromise with the President’s own policies directed toward limiting global warming.  Burning any fossil fuel, such as the oil sought in this project, will add still more carbon dioxide (CO₂) to the atmosphere, worsening the burden of greenhouse gases added to the earth’s air. 

In his second inaugural address of Jan. 21, 2013, the President committed to “respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations”.  Noting the recurrence of severe weather and climate events, he stated “none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms”.   In order to combat these trends, the President summoned the nation not to “resist this transition” to “sustainable energy sources”, but rather to “lead it” by developing the new “technology that will power new jobs and new industries”.

The President, in his State of the Union address the following year (January 28, 2014) pursued the same theme.  He stated a highly profound and basic motivation for attacking the problem of global warming: 

“Climate change is a fact.  And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.” 

Nevertheless, in spite of these lofty goals, President Obama also stated (March 15, 2012 )

“We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future -– an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”

The “all-of-the-above” energy strategy is intended to promote economic growth and job creation, enhance energy security, and develop a low-carbon energy economy.  To the extent that ensuring energy security relies on exactly those “last century” strategies based on fossil fuels, “all-of-the-above” pits continued exploitation of fossil fuels against much smaller, but rapidly growing, renewable energy industries.

The President, to his credit, has indeed set out policies that will reduce emissions of CO₂ from U. S. sources.  Emissions from passenger vehicles will be much lower since the fuel efficiency standard for cars and light trucks is to reach an average level of 54.5 mpg by 2025.  New standards for heavy-duty trucks are to be issued in 2016.  The proposed Clean Power Plan, to be finalized later in 2015, will lower emissions from large electricity generating plants by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030.  These policies are significant positive developments along a path to lowering emissions produced by the U. S.

On the other hand the Obama administration has made many decisions that could expand production of fossil fuels beyond their present extent.  Its approval of exploratory drilling in the Arctic Ocean by Shell is only the latest policy shift away from minimizing further emission of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases.  It is also authorizing extensive new coal mining operations in the Powder River basin in Wyoming and Montana.  And it has announced that leases for oil exploration in the Atlantic Ocean off the U. S. east coast could be issued beginning in 2021.  Its decision whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring Canadian tar sands oil to the U. S. is still pending.

Expanded development of fossil fuels requires the investment of large amounts of capital.  When considering expansion of our energy economy an important question always is how to deploy new investments.  In order to minimize new emissions of greenhouse gases it is important to direct such investment toward renewable energy, not to the further expansion of fossil fuel resources.  Decisions to extract more fossil fuels have long-lasting consequences, since such projects will take several years to reach fruition, and will lock in new greenhouse gas emissions for decades thereafter.  This directly interferes with achieving our goal of lowering new greenhouse gas emission rates.  Instead, it would be best to allow existing fossil fuel-burning assets to exhaust their useful lifetimes, and to replace them with renewable energy resources.

Coal is the worst among the fossil fuels in terms of greenhouse gas efficiency: burning coal generates a little more than half as much heat as natural gas per ton of CO₂ emitted.  Although the administration’s Clean Power Plan would have the effect of phasing out most coal-fired electric plants on the one hand, on the other the administration is opting to expand coal mining.  Since demand for coal will be reduced within the U. S., it is clear that newly mined coal would be destined for export.  The U. S. should not be contributing to expanded use of this inefficient fuel abroad at a time when international efforts are being directed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cars powered by internal combustion engines are very inefficient in their use of the energy contained in the fuel they burn.  Approximately 80% of that energy is dissipated, mostly as waste heat, rather than used to propel the vehicle along the road.  This is illustrated in the graphic below.

 

Electric vehicles are far more efficient in their use of electrical energy.  Whereas various gasoline-fueled cars can generally get between 20 and 40 miles per gallon (11.8-5.88 L/100 km), electric vehicles are reported to get well over 100 miles per gallon equivalent (less than 2.35 liter equivalents/100 km)  as evaluated by the U. S. Dept. of Energy .  To the extent that this electrical energy is supplied to the vehicle by renewable sources instead of from fossil fuels this represents a vast reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Conclusion

 

President Obama has made a serious environmental mistake by permitting Shell to explore for oil in the Arctic Ocean.  Actions that would lead to further extraction of fossil fuels, such as this project, would worsen the Earth’s burden of the greenhouse gas CO₂ in the atmosphere for several more decades, for the field being explored is thought to contain large supplies of oil.  The Shell Arctic project, as well as the Powder River coal development and exploration for new oil production off the eastern U. S. coast, run counter to the President’s pledge that the U. S. would lower its GHG emission rates by 26-28% from the levels emitted in 2005, by 2025.  This pledge was made during the President’s meeting with President Xi Jinping of China on Nov. 12, 2014.

 

The world faces a critical need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades.  Providing energy to support economic growth worldwide is a major component of the world’s economy.  Companies supplying fossil fuels provide a significant fraction of this energy need.  Most of these companies continue to expand production of the resources they control without heed for the welfare of our planet, and use their considerable influence to perpetuate the role that fossil fuels play in the energy economy.

 

Yet when opportunities arise for investments of new capital to supply energy to the economy, the decisions could just as well be made to develop renewable energy sources.  These industries, while presently much smaller than the fossil fuel industry, are expanding rapidly.  They provide jobs for our workers, and generate profits for the companies involved.  Now is the time for the great fossil fuel companies of the world to change their business models, resist the easy decisions to continue their usual ways of doing business, and invest in renewable energy sources instead.  Economic policies should be promoted that discourage continued development of fossil fuels and promote investment in renewable energy.

 

The nations of the world, through the United Nations, are currently involved in negotiating a worldwide climate agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  President Obama, by permitting expansion of fossil fuel extraction under his “all-of-the-above” energy policy, is compromising the leadership role that the U. S. should be playing in bringing this agreement to a successful conclusion. 

 

The President’s actions lead us to doubt whether, when “our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy”, we will “be able to say yes, we did.” 

 

© 2015 Henry Auer

A New Analysis of the Keystone XL Pipeline: Global Emissions Would Increase

Summary.  Last year President Obama stated that approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport as much as 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day from Canada to the Gulf Coast, requires a finding that the pipeline be in the national interest.  As part of the approval process the U. S. Department of State released an environmental impact statement earlier this year.  Its findings and arguments suggest that the pipeline would not have a significant effect on the environment, including greenhouse gas emissions. 

In a new journal article, however, Erickson and Lazarus conduct a comprehensive lifecycle analysis of the effects of transporting the additional oil, pointing out shortcomings in the Department of State’s environmental analysis.  They find that when operating at full capacity, the XL pipeline would increase global oil consumption by 490,000 barrels per day as of 2020, leading to new greenhouse gas emissions that are four times higher than the environmental impact statement estimated, throughout the 50 year lifetime of the pipeline.

In an era when the world should be making every effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the findings of Erickson and Lazarus clearly show that approval of the XL pipeline would increase emissions, and so would not be in the national interest.  President Obama should not approve its construction.

 

Introduction.  President Obama is weighing whether to approve construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (XL) segment from the Canadian border to an existing pipeline terminal in Oklahoma.  At full capacity it is intended to carry 830,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) of “heavy crude” oil, also called “tar sands” oil, from Alberta to refineries in the U. S. along the Gulf of Mexico.  The Department of State (DOS) is evaluating the application, since it involves international policy, to determine whether the project serves the national interest.  DOS weighs “a wide range of factors, including … environmental… and economic impacts; [and] foreign policy”, among others.  As part of its review  DOS issued its Final SupplementalEnvironmental Impact Statement (Final SEIS) concerning the application In January 2014.

The Final SEIS, as part of its lifecycle analysis of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, estimates that transporting and consuming 830,000 bpd would lead to emitting between 147 and 168 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (MTCO₂e) per year throughout the operational lifetime of the pipeline, i.e., over several decades.  The analysis finds this is 1-27 MTCO₂e higher than would be obtained by consuming a comparable amount of a reference crude oil such as Mexican Maya.

Erickson and Lazarus find that the Final SEIS radically underestimates the lifecycle emissions from operation of XL.  Peter Erickson and Michael Lazarus published their article, “Impact of the Keystone XL pipeline on global oil markets and greenhouse gas emissions”, in Nature Climate Change on Aug. 10, 2014.  The authors conducted a comprehensive economic analysis of the principal contributions to lifecycle GHG emissions (see Details at the end of this post).  It includes important considerations that they state were not apparent in the Final SEIS.  An important feature of their analysis evaluates  the decrease in the global price of oil as a result of adding the tar sands oil to world supply.  This would lead to higher consumption: “for every barrel of increased production, global oil consumption would increase 0.6 barrels”, corresponding to an increase in consumption by 490,000 bpd.  This in turn would lead to an increase in emissions, when the oil is burned, of as much as 110 MTCO₂e annually, four times higher than the upper estimate presented by DOS in the Final SEIS (see Details; these upper estimates assume operation of XL at full capacity).  Erickson and Lazarus ascribe this serious discrepancy to inadequate evaluation in the Final SEIS of the economics of the global oil market.

 Analysis 

In President Obama’s address at Georgetown University on climate change delivered on June 25, 2013, he stated that approval of the XL application required a finding that the pipeline was in the “nation’s interest.  And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.  [XL’s] effects … on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether” to approve the project.

Erickson and Lazarus have made a significant contribution to the task of assessing whether approval of XL would be in the nation’s interest.  They have pointed out two errors in the DOS Final SEIS which effectively show that the nation’s interest would not be met.

First, whereas the Final SEIS finds that the incremental increase in annual emissions rate would be at most 27 MTCO₂e compared to a reference crude, the economic analysis presented by Erickson and Lazarus concludes that emissions would be about four-fold higher than the DOS estimate, when XL operates at its full capacity.  Second, the Final SEIS stated that production of tar sands oil would not be affected whether or not XL would be approved because alternative means of transporting the oil to the Gulf Coast would be used.  (This writer has commented on the moral implications of this argument here.)  In contrast, Erickson and Lazarus show by widely recognized economic methods that shipment of tar sands oil through XL would require expanded production, and that global consumption of oil would increase by 490,000 bpd when XL is operated at full capacity.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has set forth the urgent imperative that the nations of the world have to agree on meaningful reductions of GHG emissions very soon.  Increased levels of GHGs in the atmosphere result directly in higher long-term global average temperatures, bringing physical damage, and ecological and societal harms with them.  Any project such as the XL pipeline contributes to increased GHG emissions throughout the operating lifetime of the project, which the present authors estimate at 50 years.  As a result XL clearly would not meet President Obama’s criterion for approval, namely that it be in the nation’s interest.  The President should not approve the XL pipeline project.

 

Details

The Final SEIS evaluated lifecycle emissions from projected operation of XL, and compared the result to emissions expected from production of reference sources of heavy crude oil.  The analysis included extraction, processing, transportation, refining, and final uses including gasoline for fuel, as well as co-products such as petroleum coke.

Extraction of tar sands oil was acknowledged to emit about 17% more GHGs than occurs in extraction of crude oil in the U. S. as of 2005.  Overall, the annualized burden of GHG emissions from tar sands oil was found to be 147 to 168 MTCO₂e for operation of XL at its full capacity of 830,000 bpd, compared to 124 to 149 MTCO₂e for four reference crude oils.  The incremental lifecycle burden from use of tar sands oil was evaluated to be in the range 1.2 to 27.4 MTCO₂e per year.  (The Final SEIS states that the broad range of these values arises because several reference crudes were used and because the result depends on which lifecycle study was used in the comparison.)

Erickson and Lazarus conducted a comprehensive economic lifecycle analysis of oil use and emissions arising from operation of XL, evaluated for the year 2020.  They  formulate the increment in yearly emissions over the projected lifetime of the pipeline as the total from a) those required during construction, b) those required to operate XL compared to pipeline shipment of reference crudes that would be displaced by sending tar sands crude through XL, and c) consumption of tar sands refined products compared to consumption of displaced reference crudes.  The authors agree with the Final SEIS that contributions a) and b) are trivial in comparison with c); they did not analyze those further. 

Algebraic rearrangement of their simple expression showed that a principal factor in the economic analysis is a ratio that expresses the extent to which expanding oil sands production may increase global oil consumption.  The authors state that the Final SEIS did not assess this contribution, and furthermore that it has not been treated adequately by others either.

The authors evaluated this ratio using methods of economic lifecycle analysis employed for other proposed fossil fuel extraction projects.  The principal contributions to evaluating the ratio are first, a projection of how worldwide prices for crude oil would decrease as the additional supply from operating XL would ramp up to its maximum capacity, 830,000 bpd; and second, how demand would be shifted to higher levels at any fixed price as shipment of tar sands oil increased up to the maximum.

Erickson and Lazarus conclude that net worldwide consumption of crude oil would increase by 490,000 bpd when XL operated to capacity over the 50 year-lifetime of the pipeline.  This translates to an incremental GHG emissions burden of 100-110 MTCO₂e per year, an estimate that is about four times higher than the highest value of 27 MTCO₂e per year estimated in the Final SEIS.  According to the authors, the “sole reason for this difference is that we account for the changes in global oil consumption resulting from increasing oil sands production levels, whereas the State Department does not…. Our simple model shows that, to the extent that Keystone XL leads to greater oil sands production, the pipeline's effect on oil prices could substantially increase its total GHG impact.”  (They also point out that the analysis used in the Final SEIS is proprietary and “is opaque with respect to key assumptions and features”.  In contrast, Erickson and Lazarus state that they use openly available peer-reviewed methods.  Also, their article itself underwent peer review prior to publication.)  They conclude that the Final SEIS issued by DOS has failed to consider the most important factor determining global consumption of crude oil: the increase in use due to increased supply and its effect leading to lower prices.

© 2014 Henry Auer