Renewables upstaging fossil fuels

In 2017, for the first time, the increase in renewables capacity in developing countries exceeded new investment in fossil fuels.  Note that 'fossil fuels' includes gas, which complements renewables because it can be easily dialled up or down to compensate for variable renewables supply. 

(Source: Bloomberg)

Developing countries have added more clean power capacity than fossil fuel generation for the first time ever, charging ahead of wealthier nations in the global green energy push, according to Bloomberg NEF.

Wind and solar generation accounted for just over half of the 186 gigawatts of new power capacity in developing nations last year, according to BNEF’s annual Climatescope survey released Tuesday. Not only that, they’ve added more clean energy generation than developed economies, increasing zero-carbon capacity by 114 gigawatts compared with about 63 gigawatts in richer countries.

The findings show a turnaround from a decade ago when the world’s wealthiest nations dominated renewable investment and deployment activities.

“Just a few years ago, some argued that less developed nations could not, or even should not, expand power generation with zero-carbon sources because these were too expensive,” Dario Traum, BNEF Climatescope project manager said in a statement. “Today, these countries are leading the charge when it comes to deployment, investment, policy innovation and cost reductions.”

Emerging markets added the least new coal-fired power generating capacity last year since at least 2006. New coal plants in these countries slumped 38 percent from a year earlier to 48 gigawatts in 2017, which was about half of the peak in 2015, according to BNEF.

[Read more here]

I expect that the collapse in coal will accelerate, because not only are new renewables cheaper than new coal, they are now in many places cheaper than existing coal.  (Also, remember that the capacity factors for renewables are around 30% whereas the capacity factors for coal are higher--though in India and China, where there is overcapacity and coal-generated power is more expensive than wind or solar, not much higher.)

Natural climate solutions

Farmland near Leongatha, Victoria

The key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to switch all electricity generation to renewable sources, because, in principle, most activities can be electrified.  For example, we can heat our homes with electricity, not gas; we can electrify transport (and where we can't, we can create carbon-neutral fuels); we may even be able to electrify some industrial processes, such as making iron and steel.  But that will still leave agriculture and land clearing, which are responsible for 20% plus of emissions.   

The good news is that there are inexpensive changes we can make which could reduce net agricultural emissions to zero.

Conserving and restoring American forest, farm and natural lands could cut a substantial chunk of the country's emissions, helping meet greenhouse gas reduction goals without relying on undeveloped technologies, a new report finds.

A team of 38 researchers spent more than two years looking at "natural climate solutions"—a range of strategies that includes planting trees in cities, preventing the conversion of natural grassland to farmland and shifting to fertilizers that produce less greenhouse gas emissions.  

In a study published Wednesday in Science Advances, they report that these solutions, if deployed across agricultural lands, forests, grasslands and wetlands, could mitigate 21 percent of the country's net annual greenhouse gas emissions, getting the U.S. closer to meetings its goals under the Paris climate agreement.

The researchers found that reforestation had the single largest maximum potential to store carbon or take it up from the atmosphere—nearly 307 million metric tons. Most of the potential lies in forests in the Northeast and south-central regions of the country. "Natural forest management" strategies, which include things like extending harvest cycles or reduced-impact logging, could mitigate an additional 267 million metric tons. (The researchers calculated the overall net emissions of the U.S. as 5.8 billion metric tons, factoring in existing carbon sinks.)

The researchers looked at a number of solutions in agriculture, including avoiding the conversion of grassland to cropland, using cover crops planted in the off-season that add carbon to the soil, and using fertilizer more judiciously.  The solutions also included "biochar"—a form of charcoal made from a number of sources, including agricultural residue, that can be used to build healthier soil—and the practice of "alley cropping," or planting trees between crops.

Altogether these agricultural practices have the potential to mitigate nearly 440 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, the researchers found.

[Read more here]

Sea level rise projections increasing

(Hat tip to Zeke Hausfather)


The new National Climate Assessment from the Trump administration shows more severe high-end sea level rise scenarios than were featured in the last IPCC report: up to 8 feet (2.4 meters) by 2100:

Since 1900, global average sea level has risen by about 7–8 inches (about 16–21 cm). The rate of sea level rise over the 20th century was higher than in any other century in at least the last 2,800 years, according to proxy data such as salt marsh sediments and fossil corals. Since the early 1990s, the rate of global average sea level rise has increased due to increased melting of land-based ice.  As a result, almost half (about 0.12 inches [3 mm] per year) of the observed rise of 7–8 inches (16–21 cm) has occurred since 1993.

Over the first half of this century, the future scenario the world follows has little effect on projected sea level rise due to the inertia in the climate system. However, the magnitude of human-caused emissions this century significantly affects projections for the second half of the century and beyond. Relative to the year 2000, global average sea level is very likely to rise by 0.3–0.6 feet (9–18 cm) by 2030, 0.5–1.2 feet (15–38 cm) by 2050, and 1–4 feet (30–130 cm) by 2100. These estimates are generally consistent with the assumption—possibly flawed—that the relationship between global temperature and global average sea level in the coming century will be similar to that observed over the last two millennia. These ranges do not, however, capture the full range of physically plausible global average sea level rise over the 21st century. Several avenues of research, including emerging science on physical feedbacks in the Antarctic ice sheet (e.g., DeConto and Pollard 2016, Kopp et al. 2017) suggest that global average sea level rise exceeding 8 feet (2.5 m) by 2100 is physically plausible, although its probability cannot currently be assessed (see Sweet et al. 2017, Kopp et al. 2017).

[Read more here]

(Source)

Note how each successive estimate of the likely rise in sea level has been higher than the previous one, and how the range has increased.  It's tempting to hope that the actual rise is at the low end of the projections.  But why should it be that way?  It could just as easily be at the high end of projections.  Consider what will happen to Miami if sea level rise by 2100 is actually 2.4 metres, more than the height of even the tallest man. 

Gropey

A cartoon by Leigh Rubin

Starlink

I've been wondering why Starlink (SpaceX's plan to create a global high-speed internet using satellites) has been so slow, and with so little publicity, given SpaceX's more usual go-go-go and let-the-world-know proclivities.

From Reuters:

SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk flew to the Seattle area in June for meetings with engineers leading a satellite launch project crucial to his space company’s growth.

Within hours of landing, Musk had fired at least seven members of the program’s senior management team at the Redmond, Washington, office, the culmination of disagreements over the pace at which the team was developing and testing its Starlink satellites, according to the two SpaceX employees with direct knowledge of the situation.

Known for pushing aggressive deadlines, Musk quickly brought in new managers from SpaceX headquarters in California to replace a number of the managers he fired. Their mandate: Launch SpaceX’s first batch of U.S.-made satellites by the middle of next year, the sources said.

The management shakeup and the launch timeline, previously unreported, illustrate how quickly Musk wants to bring online SpaceX’s Starlink program, which is competing with OneWeb and Canada’s Telesat to be first to market with a new satellite-based Internet service.

Those services - essentially a constellation of satellites that will bring high-speed Internet to rural and suburban locations globally - are key to generating the cash that privately-held SpaceX needs to fund Musk’s real dream of developing a new rocket capable of flying paying customers to the moon and eventually trying to colonize Mars.

“It would be like rebuilding the Internet in space,” Musk told an audience in 2015 when he unveiled Starlink. “The goal would be to have a majority of long-distance Internet traffic go over this network.”

Among the managers fired from the Redmond office was SpaceX Vice President of Satellites Rajeev Badyal, an engineering and hardware veteran of Microsoft Corp and Hewlett-Packard, and top designer Mark Krebs, who worked in Google’s satellite and aircraft division, the employees said. Krebs declined to comment, and Badyal did not respond to requests for comment.

The management shakeup followed in-fighting over pressure from Musk to speed up satellite testing schedules, one of the sources said. 

Culture was also a challenge for recent hires, a second source said. A number of the managers had been hired from nearby technology giant Microsoft, where workers were more accustomed to longer development schedules than Musk’s famously short deadlines.

“Rajeev wanted three more iterations of test satellites,” one of the sources said. “Elon thinks we can do the job with cheaper and simpler satellites, sooner.”

[Read more here]

Starlink and SpaceX's BFR/BFS go together.  The market for satellite-based broadband and TV services is $128 billion, the satellite launch market is just $5.5 billion.  So this will be a substantial new revenue source for SpaceX, revenue it will need to develop and build the first BFRs and BFSs, whose development costs Musk estimates at $5 billion.  At the same time,  launching 10,000 satellites needs the huge capacity of the BFR/BFS.  Needing to launch so many satellites in fact creates the market for the BFR/BFS.  And using re-usable rockets cuts launch costs by a factor of at least 10. 

The first 900 satellites will have to be launched on the Falcon 9, and even at 10 satellites per launch that will more than double the number of launches globally each year, from 66 to over 150.

Let me say at once that the chances are that I will subscribe to Starlink when it becomes available.  Out in the bundu where I live, the broadband connection to the wider world is pretty feeble.  And not exactly cheap.  An ultra-high-speed connection would be excellent.  Musk is talking of starting the service in mid-2019, but that will prolly be just in the US (though come to think of it, since the satellites orbit the world .....)   What such a network of satellites means is that anywhere in the world--the Sahara, the Amazon, Antarctica, as well as cities and rural backwaters--will be connected to the internet, for phone calls, TV, and everything.  This will be an extraordinary creation.  And in developing countries it will combine with cheap rooftop solar to bring the whole world into the 21st century. 

Carbon-friendly jet fuel

Vapour trails.  Source: Transport & Environment

Electricity generation is transitioning to renewables.  Not fast enough, but it is happening.   There are no technological or economic barriers to achieving a 100% green grid--though there are, it's true, technical and organisational issues to be faced.  Similarly, over the next 15 or 20 years, it will be inevitable that our land transportation fleet will be electrified.  I'm not saying we should relax--fossil fuel interests will do their best to delay or prevent these transitions, but the economics has turned (or soon will) unambiguously in favour of the green alternatives.

That leaves air travel, sea transport, iron and steel, cement production, agriculture and land clearing.  Each of these is more complicated and difficult than transitioning generation to renewables and our ICE fleet to EVs.

Aviation is responsible for 5% of global warming and its rapid growth puts it on track to consume a quarter of the world’s carbon budget by 2050. There is a way to avoid this outcome but we need to act fast, a green transport NGO has said. By driving out the use of fossil kerosene fuel through carbon pricing and requiring aircraft to switch to synthetic fuels, the climate impact of flying can be reduced dramatically, according to a new report by Transport & Environment (T&E).

While high profile promises such as short-haul electric aircraft or more efficient aircraft designs every 20 years won’t be sufficient to solve aviation’s climate problem, new near-zero-carbon electrofuels can be produced today and deployed immediately using existing engines and infrastructure. Electrofuels are produced by combining hydrogen with carbon dioxide, but to do this sustainably the hydrogen must be produced using renewable electricity and the CO2 captured directly from the air.

Synthetic fuels have been used in the past to power aircraft but are significantly more expensive than aviation kerosene, which is tax free. Running aircraft entirely on synthetic fuels would increase the cost of a plane ticket by 58% assuming kerosene remains untaxed, or 23% if a proper carbon price would be levied on kerosene, the report finds. Biofuels produced from wastes and residues can make a limited contribution to replacing fossil kerosene. 

Andrew Murphy, aviation manager at T&E, said: “This report confirms that we need to decarbonise aviation if we want to avoid catastrophic global warming. The good news is that radically cleaner aviation is possible even with today’s technology. Getting to zero starts with properly pricing flying, and progressively increasing the use of sustainable synthetic fuels. There is a cost to this, but in light of how cheap subsidised air travel has become, and the incalculable cost of runaway climate change, it’s a price worth paying.”

To facilitate the progressive switch to electrofuels, demand for kerosene must start to be cut and carbon pricing must gradually be increased to the equivalent of €150 a tonne, the report finds. Taxing aircraft kerosene – currently exempt – and a strengthened EU ETS can help achieve this as can strict CO2 efficiency standards for planes and greater incentives for fleet renewal.

A leaked version of the European Commission’s strategy to decarbonise the EU’s economy by 2050 highlighted the potential role of synthetic fuels. Earlier this month the IPCC also emphasised the importance of synthetic jet fuel. Meanwhile, governments are pursuing a controversial UN offsetting scheme for aviation, known as Corsia. There are serious doubts over the environmental effectiveness of carbon offsets and the UN’s plan only caps airlines’ emissions at 2020 levels.

Andrew Murphy concluded: “Putting aviation on a pathway to zero won’t be easy but this report shows it can be done. If we want to succeed we need to stop pursuing false solutions. It’s crystal clear that the UN’s plan to let airlines offset their emissions is a distraction at best. We need governments to focus on the things that matter: proper pricing and cleaner fuels. The European Commission has a unique opportunity to commit to this in its 2050 decarbonisation strategy.”

[Read more here]

If we aimed to transition jetfuel for air travel to 100% synthetic kerosene over 20 years, the cost impact would be spread out and small.  For example, we could require that each year the percentage of synthetic kerosene in the fuel mix could be lifted by 5%.  That would mean that, ceteris paribus, jetfuel prices would rise by just 3% per annum.  And in 20 years, air travel would not be adding any new CO2 to the atmosphere.

There's another consideration.  The synthetic jetfuel would be produced by a variant of the Sabatier reaction.  This takes H2 from electrolysing water  and CO2 from the atmosphere and blends them at high temperatures and pressure in the presence of a catalyst to produce methane.  Once you have methane, other hydro-carbons can be made.  It seems inevitable that we will need to install more renewable capacity than we might on require on average to cater for consecutive days when the wind doesn't blow and the sun isn't shining strongly.  Ensuring grid stability with 100% renewables will likely require excess capacity as well as storage.  But that will mean that on days when the sun is shining and the wind is strong there will be excess electricity potentially available.  To stop the grid burning out, that surplus output will either have to be spilled, or output from wind and solar farms will have to be curtailed.  Which means, in effect, that that electricity will be free.  So the cost of producing synthetic jetfuel and synthetic natural gas could be much lower, given that their costs are high because the process is so energy intensive.  It's a win-win: surplus renewable power could be used to produce carbon-friendly jetfuel.