If we started replacing the world's power plants to carbon free energy production at the rate of one plant per day, it would take 69 years to make them all carbon neutral.
by Roger Pielke, Jr.
The Center for Global Development estimates that there are 25,339 power plants around the world that emit carbon dioxide. If the world starts replacing or converting these plants to carbon free energy production at the rate of one plant per day, then it will take 69 years to make all of these power plants carbon neutral, and an 80% conversion would take 56 years.
If you'd like assume that most emissions come from the largest plants, you can cut those numbers in half or even by 2/3 and the point remains. At a conversion rate of one plant per week - using only the top 1/3 emitters - it would take 145 years to convert 80% of these 1/3 (162 years to convert the entire 1/3).
But energy production from fossil fuel power plants is of course increasing, so these are conservative numbers. The rate of conversion from carbon dioixde emitting power plants currently is negative (they are growing in number, at a rate of, what, several per week? Good data sources appreciated in the comments), so the conversion clock is running in reverse. And, oh yeah, power plant emissions according to CGD are 29% of the global total.
The point of this post is not that mitigation is impossible, but that it arguably is much, much harder a challenge than typically advertised. Any guesses on when the power plant conversion rate will become positive, and a what rate it will occur? Will it occur at all?
Downright depressing and daunting when you think about it. Having recently begun to work in the energy industry, my eyes have really been opened to how big and complex this problem really is. Conceptually, though, it always helps to break a problem down into smaller more incremental steps. I think taking this in three steps could make it seem more manageable (noting that each of these three could be divided into several others).
1) Intensive R&D and deployment of a variety of low and non-emitting technologies to find out what works, drive down costs and prove feasibility. There isn't a silver bullet. This will mean both a focus on renewables, continuing deployment of wind and bio resources while also increasing attention to promising future technologies like large scale concentrated solar, geothermal and tidal/wave hydroelectric. This will also mean real concentrated effort at demonstrating carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to find out if it is truly feasible (since this technology, if perfected, offers the best hope for reducing emissions worldwide in both developed and developing countries). Finally, a realistic look at advanced nuclear, waste problems and all, will be necessary and large scale government involvement will be necessary to deploy these expensive but proven and effective base load technology. Environmentalists, politicians and the general public will have to hold their noses and decide whether the daunting (but on the whole manageable) problems of nuclear waste and security. Stage one must be all about developing viable technologies that can compete with and replace coal and natural gas for both base load and peaking generation needs.
2) Once this is done, and it could take a few decades, deployment of the technological winners from the first step need to be deployed on a massive scale. Developed nations must assist in making these technologies economically viable and thus attractive to developing areas. As far as possible, efficient CCS should be retrofitted to existing plants in order to not create too large a hole in generation and the shortfall thus created (CCS plants will not be as efficient as regular coal/gas plants because of the energy used in the capture and sequestration process) should be covered by reliable renewables and ramped up deployment of nuclear power where security concerns can be effectively addressed. As a goal, most or all new generation deployed in stage two should be very low or non carbon emitting.
3) Stage two should create the kinds of economies and scales that can allow new clean plants to replace dirty older ones. Hopefully by this time the economic competitiveness of clean technologies will be such that it will make sense to replace dirtier plants whose long term economic costs (i.e. climate change) are no longer sustainable. It is in this stage that the sharp reductions in greenhouse emissions will take place. Some of this will naturally be done as older coal and gas plants are retired, but some perfectly good plants built in the late 20th and early 21st centuries must be retired as well to make deep cuts in emissions. At this point, governments, businesses and citizens must be willing to truly and vigorously pursue rapid declines in carbon emissions. allowing technologies to mature in the first two steps should have laid the foundations to make this conversion possible and economically feasible without resulting in massive costs which will dispel popular support for dealing with climate change.
HOPEFULLY, in pursuing the problem in this way, the conversion rate will be turned positive by stage three and in a massive way. Before that happens, energy efficiency and conservation should be stressed to slow down the negative ticking of the clock as much as possible; the more new construction (especially of base load capacity) can be pushed to the future, the better it fits with the longer-term time scale of clean generation deployment, first wind and nuclear to be followed by advanced solar and CCS. This will also reduce as much as possible the forecasted switch to natural gas, which is a costly stop gap that threatens to drive up energy costs and destroy consensus in favor of tackling climate change. From where we are today and assuming we truly get serious about this problem, then hopefully we could be in stage three by 2025-2030 and will then be in a position to achieve the type of 2050 targets we are talking about today.
Some will criticize this as more of the same "wait for the technology" line. I would only offer that we must change this paradigm to one of "push for the technology." With rapidly growing population and rapid development, especially in China and India, we probably have only one chance of getting this right. It must be done in such a way that the whole world can be brought in to the process. The key is a broad range of available and affordable technology that will provide viable low or non emitting alternatives for every country in the world: it's time to get serious. Every year we fail to act is another year lost on the clock.
Posted by: Michael at June 3, 2008 7:48 PM