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Coal Poses Climate Catastrophe as “Peak Oil” Approaches
Harvey Leifert, Scientific American
When will oil production peak and begin to decline? Scientists, engineers and economists have debated the point for years, on the assumption that emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will decline when less oil is burned.
Not so, says Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist with the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, Calif. That assumes society switches to low-carbon fuel. But there’s a good chance society will jump to the most abundant fuel around: Coal, which emits 25 to 50 percent more carbon dioxide per energy unit than petroleum, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Therefore, Caldeira said, the more important question – and one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate models – is “will the end of oil usher in a century of coal, or will it usher in a transition toward low-carbon-emitting technologies?”
Speaking Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Caldeira reported on recent forecasts of how the climate would respond if the world completely stopped using oil today
(18 December 2008)
Related:
Oil Is Not the Climate Change Culprit — It’s All About Coal (Wired)
Coal should be warming concern: scientists (Reuters)
Climate outcome ‘hangs on coal’ (BBC)
Coal Reserve Estimates Way Too High, Says Expert
Michael Kanellos, Greentech Media
Government agencies have estimated that there is about 850 billion to 998 billion tons of coal in the ground that can be economically recoverable.
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Not so, says David Rutledge, the Kiyo and Eiko Tomiyasu Professor of Engineering at Caltech, who has done his own estimates and showed them off this week at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Rutledge estimates that the Earth had only 662 billion tons of recoverable coal in the first place and around 59 percent of the total remains. Thus, the real estimate of existing reserves is closer to 400 billion tons. (The earth, he added, contained the equivalent of 1 trillion tons of oil before the industrial age began.) He came to the conclusion by analyzing production data, similar to how M. King Hubbert in 1956 predicted U.S. oil production would peak in 1970. It peaked in 1971.
… That number, to some degree, is good news for the renewable power industry
… How come his estimates differ so much from the officially sanctioned ones from government?
(18 December 2008)
Related: Coal waning? World’s reserves may be nearly expired (Ars Technica)
E.P.A. Ruling Could Speed Up Approval of Coal Plants
Matthew L. Wald and Felicity Barringer, New York Times
Officials weighing federal applications by utilities to build new coal-fired power plants cannot consider their greenhouse gas output, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency ruled late Thursday. Some environmentalists fear the decision will clear the way for the approval of several such plants in the last days of the Bush administration.
The ruling, by Stephen L. Johnson, the administrator, responds to a decision made last month by the Environmental Appeals Board, a panel within the E.P.A., that had blocked the construction of a small new plant on the site of an existing power plant, Bonanza, on Ute tribal land in eastern Utah.
The Supreme Court ruled last year that the agency could regulate carbon dioxide, the most prevalent global warming gas, under existing law. The agency already requires some power plants to track how much carbon dioxide they emit.
But a memorandum issued by Mr. Johnson late Thursday puts the agency on record saying that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant to be regulated when approving power plants. He cited “sound policy considerations.”
(18 December 2008)
Will ‘peak oil’ spur expanded coal use? And what does it mean for climate?
Mongabay
Whether oil is succeeded by coal or renewables will have major impact on climate
The world must phase out emissions from coal by 2030 to avert dangerous climate change, said scientists speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Arguing that the planet will face environmental constraints well before fossil fuel resources are exhausted, scientists including Jim Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, and Ken Caldeira urged leaders to take bold action to leave coal in the ground and promote the development of low-carbon energy sources including wind, solar, and geothemal.
“Addressing the climate problem means addressing the coal problem,” said Caldeira, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University. “Whether there’s a little more oil or a little less oil will change the details, but if we want to change the overall shape of the warming curve, it matters what we do with coal.”
(19 December 2008)
