US Carbon Emissions Hit 20-Year Low 245
Freddybear writes "A recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Agency says that U.S. carbon emissions are the lowest they have been in 20 years, and attributes the decline to the increasing use of cheap natural gas obtained from fracking wells. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for 'cautious optimism' about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that 'ultimately people follow their wallets' on global warming. 'There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources,' said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado."
Just from burning coal? (Score:2, Interesting)
Note how the graph says "Carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in the U.S. from burning coal has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years".
Is the data truly valid for *ALL* emissions, or as the graph suggests, just the ones from burning coal?
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:5, Interesting)
It produces around 30-40% less CO2 than coal for the same power output. Coal is particularly bad, both in terms of CO2 production, and other kinds of pollution (though with currently mandated scrubbers it's not as bad a contributor to things like acid rain as it once was).
Power generation still a big problem (Score:4, Interesting)
We are running on overbuilt capacity from the 1960s. After that it became very, very expensive to build a large power plant - with most of the new costs being public protests and public comment sessions that turned into more and more evironmental impact studies. Often the result was the project was abandoned.
In Arizona and Illinois (both places I have lived) the solution was simple: build "peaker" plants that run on natural gas and build them up over time from 200MW to more like 1000MW over time. This still results in a lot of protest activity but governing bodies are far more likely to ignore protests when the plant has been safely and cleanly operating for five years or so when it comes time to expand.
The problem is that this is just a delaying tactic that will not solve the problem in the long run. Most parts of the country could use another 2000MW of capacity right now. Certainly if the economy recovers there will be considerable need for more and more electric power which today simply isn't available.
It is just barely possible today to build a data center that is independent of the grid but the costs for the battery storage are huge. Solar PV generation is constantly being touted as a solution, but the only way it is a real solution would be to have it on a lot of homes and other buildings - a lot meaning probably over 50% of them. Unfortunately, this doesn't address the grid problems at 5-9 PM when everyone gets home, turns down the air conditioner temperature and turns on the microwave and the washing machine. To fix that we are going to need capacity that doesn't depend on the sun and today's grid-tied PV systems do not address that at all.
One way out of the coming capacity crisis would be to have a big switch at the power company office: Day (offices) and Night (homes). This is literally what we might be facing soon. The problem is that we could easily have this kind of capacity problem in five years. It takes five years to build a new coal plant without any public opposition - and there would be plenty no matter where it was going to be built. It takes more like ten years to build a nuclear plant and we almost certainly do not have ten years before really running into a big capacity problem. We also need maybe 20-30 new plants coming on line in five years and we haven't even started building them.
The power companies really don't care. They will not be the enemy when you find your refrigerator doesn't run during the day and there is a new box that shuts off your house power whenever the capacity is needed. You can bet their PR departments and outside agencies will be working overtime to make sure someone else gets the blame.
But hey, if we don't build any new plants you can bet everyone will be shouting about how our CO2 emissions are down.
Re:OR (Score:2, Interesting)
The article and title here are very misleading since they actually refer only to power production, not overall CO2...
While gas has advantages over coal, there are serious issues with fracking.
âoeThe oil and gas industry is a significant source of VOCs, which contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone (smog),â said the EPA in announcing new rules for drilling issued this April. The EPA said methaneâ"what natural gas is made ofâ"is a highly potent greenhouse gas. The agency blames oil and gas production and processing for âoenearly 40% of all U.S. methane emissions.â
http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/08/07/frackings-link-to-smog-worries-some-texas-cities/ [npr.org]
http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/07/30/in-northeast-pennsylvania-methane-migration-means-flammable-puddles-and-30-foot-geysers/ [npr.org]
As with what's happening with corporate "free speech", money/stock may be an influence elsewhere. The study showing that it was toxic waste fluid injection wells causing contamination, not fracking itself, came from someone who received over 1.5 million in salary/stock (and didn't disclose that either).
Even stranger, he was a senior official at the USGS, which instead of showing their own studies on fracking related quakes, linked to a similar outside study. There are many brilliant people at the USGS that don't deserve reputations being soiled by a key player.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/07/23/fracking-company-paid-texas-professor-behind-water-contamination-study/ [npr.org]
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of a natural trend? (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember reading an article many years ago - long before the global warming scare - that pointed out that moving to lower carbon fuels was a long-term trend. Industry started out with coal and charcoal, essentually pure carbon. Then it moved on to oil, which contains a mix of carbon and hydrogen. Natural gas was up-and-coming, with 1 carbon to 4 hydrogens. The article assumed that the future held nuclear and solar, both of which are essentially zero-carbon.
Aside from the hiccups with nuclear (justified or not, depending on your point of view), the article seems to have been pretty prescient.
Kind of proves the opposite. (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep hearing from conservatives that we can't do anything about climate change or reducing CO2.
That is what you heard.
That's not what they said.
Conservatives have long claimed there is no need to spend extra money to reduce CO2. They said there would be no benefit in ham-stringing first world countries in many ways to reduce a gas that may not even be causing a problem.
And as it turns out, they were correct. If we had adopted Kyoto the U.S. would have a far worse economy than we have today, with many additional regulations imposed on businesses - when it turns out those additional regulations were never even needed.
Over time alternative energy WILL naturally overcome traditional sources just in cost benefit alone, there is no need to hurt the productivity of countries to make that happen.
Re:The Long Game (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Long Game (Score:2, Interesting)
You do understand that they mine the cheapest, easiest to get at gas first, just like any other resource.
You do understand that extraction technology improves over time to easily get at once was difficult...
Fracking itself is an excellent example, none of the stuff fracking can get to was considered viable to extract not that long ago.
200 years of cost-effect extraction, just in the U.S. alone. Easy. But I'm sure renewable sources will cross the cost threshold long before we run out of even the most easily extracted raw energy from the earth.
Re:OR (Score:4, Interesting)
The last time the state of Milankovitch Cycles was similar to what they are now was during the interglacial about 430,000 years ago. That one lasted about 30,000 years. But if "On the Effect of a New Grand Minimum of Solar Activity on the Future Climate on Earth" (Feulner & Rahmstorf 2010) [agu.org] is right then the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases has postponed any new ice age indefinitely. It's unlikely a new glacial period will happen any time soon certainly not in the lifetime of anyone alive today*.
*Assuming no breakthroughs in immortality.
Re:What.....and no government mandate (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a lot of room between roman_mir's free market worship and Marxist economics.
Precisely.
They are polar opposites, as Maxists do not believe in a free market. Roman_mir's experiences living under the oppression of a Marxist government and in an "economy" ("We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.") planned and run by Marxists has illustrated to him, like nothing else can, how horrible such societies are to live in and what happens when there is *not* a free market. Note: "free" in this context does not mean lawless.
What was your point?
Strat