It is all about the stunning exit from the coal industry band their
easy and cost effective replacement with natural gas generators. It
is twenty five percent complete and I expect the conversion will
continue apace until completion. That option was always superior but
lacked secure supply. That is what has changed completely. Add in
the conversion of long haul trucking to natural gas and we are also
looking at reducing oil demand also by two to three million barrels
per day. This is all happening without any significant technology
been introduced at the customer level.
In the end it is a gift. Take it and smile. The real energy
revolution is happening but it is not upon us yet. When I began this
blog, I recognized that conversion of our energy regime had to
happen, but though quite reasonably that the conversion would prove
difficult and disruptive. The advent of frack gas has outright saved
us from all that while we truly get our house in order and leave
carbon based fuels behind. This was the major bullet and it has been
ducked.
I think all coal plants can be mothballed by 2020. I also suspect
that we will be able to mothball all nuclear by 2030. all this while
we switch over to electric vehicles.
U.S. leads the
world in cutting CO2 emissions — so why aren’t we talking
about it?
By David Roberts
Contrary to popular
belief, the U.S. is making progress on climate change.
We have cut our carbon
emissions more than any other country in the world in recent years
— 7.7 percent since 2006. U.S. emissions fell 1.9 percent
last year and are projected to fall 1.9 percent again this year,
which will put us back at 1996 levels. It will not be easy to
achieve the reductions Obama promised in Copenhagen — 17 percent
(from 2005 levels) by 2020 — but that goal no longer looks out of
reach, even in the absence of comprehensive legislation.
Why isn’t this
extraordinary story a bigger deal in U.S. politics? You’d think
Obama would be boasting about it! Turns out, though, it’s a little
awkward for him, since several of the drivers responsible are things
for which he can’t (or might not want to) take credit.
Awkward: that whole
recession thing
First off there’s
the Great Recession, which flattened electricity demand in
2008. It has never recovered — in fact, in part due to 2011′s mild
winter, it has even declined slightly:
For obvious reasons,
boasting about the environmental benefits of the recession is not
something Obama’s eager to do.
Awkward:
frack-o-mania
The second big driver
is the glut of cheap natural gas, which is currently trading at the
10-year low of about $3 per million British thermal units. This
is absolutely crushing coal, the biggest source of CO2 in the
electric sector:
The share of U.S.
electricity that comes from coal is forecast to fall below 40% for
the year, its lowest level since World War II. Four years ago, it was
50%. By the end of this decade, it is likely to be near 30%.
Here’s U.S.
electricity generation from 2000-2012. Look how dramatic coal’s
recent plunge is:
In April, coal and
natural gas both contributed 32 percent to the U.S.
electricity mix — equal for the first time since EIA started
collecting data in the ’70s. This is, as Alexis
Madrigal emphasizes, an extraordinary shift, unprecedented in
the history of the U.S. electrical system.
It’s helpful to
Obama to be able to point to cheap natural gas when people accuse his
EPA of killing coal. And it’s helpful in his effort to claim “all
of the above.” But fracking’s potential environmental and health
impacts has quickly made it a flash point with his environmental base
(and his Hollywood base), so it’s at the very least a fraught
subject.
Awkward: Kenyan
socialist EPA sharia tyranny
A less significant
driver of the switch from coal to natural gas is the EPA’s long
overdue rollout of new or tightened clean-air rules onmercury, SO2
and NOx, and CO2. Those rules may do more work later on down the
line when/if natural gas prices rise again, but for now the best
analysis [PDF] shows that natural gas is doing most of the work
killing coal. Nonetheless, EPA regs have proven a source of potent
right-wing attacks on Obama and he’s probably not eager to call
undue attention to them.
Thus: silence in
the political world
So: given the fact
that the decline in emissions is driven, at least in the conventional
narrative, by an explosion in fossil fuel production, a recession,
and a series of EPA regulations, it’s not hard to see why Obama
isn’t eager to put it front and center. It’s got a little
something for everyone to hate.
And of course the
right isn’t eager to talk about it either, since conservative dogma
tells us that there’s no way to grow the economy and shrink CO2
emissions at the same time … and yet, uh, that’s what’s
happening. At the end of 2012, our economy will be much larger than
it was in 1996, yet its carbon emissions will be the same. If
conservatives acknowledge that it’s possible to loosen the link
between climate pollution and economic growth, they’ll have to
explain why we shouldn’t do a whole lot more of it.
Still, while the story
has remained largely sub rosa in political media, there are
several overlooked details that paint a happier picture than the
conventional one above. There’s more to this story than natural gas
and recession.
Happy: Coal’s
getting its ass kicked by activists
First, it isn’t just
natural gas and EPA taking coal out — it’s the kick-ass anti-coal
movement! Fighting tooth-and-nail, plant-by-plant, it has blocked new
construction and shut down over 100 existing plants.
The campaign has been
so disciplined and successful that it’s drawn the support of NYC
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who does not typically invest his own
money in feel-good symbolism. He expects accountability and he’s
getting it. Like the man said, “Ending coal power production
is the right thing to do.”
Happy: Clean energy
is happening
Renewable energy still
represents a small portion of U.S. electricity generation, but that
fact obscures its outsized impact. The U.S. doesn’t need to add a
ton of renewables for things to start shaking loose.
Here’s growth over
the last decade:
###
One thing that jumps
out is that renewables are growing much faster in some places
than others. South Dakota now gets 22 percent of its electricity from
wind, Iowa 19 percent. The top two states in total installed wind are
Kansas and Texas. The top two for wind jobs are Iowa and Texas.
That’s three red states and a deeply purple one — a wedge
separating clean energy from the climate culture wars. That portends
accelerating changes in the political economy.
Also driving changes
in political economy: 29 states and D.C. now have mandatory renewable
energy standards.
Installed wind and
solar have doubled in the U.S. since Obama took office. Costs for
solar are plunging like crazy and onshore wind powermay be
competitive with fossil fuels without subsidies by 2016. The National
Renewable Energy Laboratory says the U.S. could get 80 percent
of its power from renewables by 205o. Given that “official”
projections of renewable energy growth have been consistently
beneath the mark, it’s not unreasonable to think we may
beunderestimating future growth.
And renewables don’t
have to get that big to start making waves. The sun shines most when
the most electricity is being used — “peak demand” — so it
serves to sharply reduce peak prices. Turns out that’s where
utilities make a lot of their money. U.S. utilities are being forced
to crank off coal plants when peak prices drop and then crank them
back on afterwards.
It is no fun to turn
coal plants on and off — it’s slow, laborious, and kills their
economics. More and more, utility managers are turning toward
upgraded, smarter grids and more flexible, responsive “mid-load”
plants (i.e. natural gas). By hacking off peak prices, renewables
will make the dynamics even worse for coal, well before they reach a
large proportion of total electricity.
So renewables are a
bigger part of this story than they appear, and getting bigger.
Happy: Demand is
leveling off long-term
It’s not just the
recession that’s bringing down U.S. energy demand — the leveling
off of demand is a long-term trend. The U.S. Energy Information
Administration (EIA) projects energy use will grow quite slowly
through 2035:
And this is almost
certainly conservative: EIA doesn’t model policy changes,
underestimates the role of technology, ignores rising fossil fuel
prices, and is incapable of predicting cultural shifts.
For instance, few
projections anticipated the sharp decline in driving in the
U.S., which has been driven (ahem) as much by cultural and
demographic factors as by economics.
Or consider the
dramatic progress in energy use in buildings, which was also not
anticipated by EIA. From Architecture 2030 comes this
graph, which compares the EIA Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) projections
on U.S. building stock from 2005 with the ones from 2012:
The growth in U.S.
building stock is slowing (in part — but only in part! — due to
the recession), but growth in building energy consumption
is dramatically slowing, thanks to advances in energy
efficiency technology. EIA now expects CO2 emissions from the
building sector to decline by 2035. That’s a pretty big change from
going up by over 50 percent!
And that’s just with
straight-line projections. If “best available demand technologies”
are deployed, it looks like this:
It’s within our
reach to reduce the CO2 emissions of the building sector almost 22
percent! Given that building standards are one of the few areas of
bipartisan agreement on energy these days, it’s not crazy to think
that we’ll get closer to the latter projections than the former.
And the EIA
projections for building energy consumption, Architecture 2030 notes,
do not incorporate “sustainable planning applications or passive
heating and cooling, natural ventilation, daylighting, or spatial
configuration and site design strategies,” all of which are gaining
in popularity and sophistication.
In short, there’s
reason to think the demand-side story is similar to the supply-side
story: official projections are dramatically underestimating
potential.
Worry, but be happy
To sum up: yes, the
explosive growth of natural gas and the Great Recession played a big
part in U.S. climate emissions declining in recent years. And either
of them could reverse in years to come. But they are not
the whole story. There are real transitions underway —
seedlings that can be watered and fertilized.
As Brad Plumer
notes, America’s modest progress to date still leaves the world on
a pathway to climate catastrophe. But it also shows that projections
are not destiny. Things can change, and quickly.
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