POWER DOWN: IEA calls for a multitrillion dollar investment to improve energy efficiency.
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Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels and meet energy needs, the International Energy Agency warned today.
IEA's "World Energy Outlook" raises the stakes for U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. Delaying the shift to low-carbon energy by just a few years, it says, will make it impossible to avert catastrophic temperature rises.
The report predicts $26 trillion in 2008 U.S. dollars through 2030 is needed for energy projects to meet growing energy demand, if the world continues on its current energy-use trajectory and remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
Another $10.5 trillion must be spent to lower energy-related greenhouse gas emissions over that span to meet a lower-carbon scenario, the report says.
No change in government policies means "rapidly increasing dependence on fossil fuels, with alarming consequences for climate change and energy security," the report says.
Nobuo Tanaka, IEA's executive director, said the report provides both a stern warning and cause for optimism.
"Continuation of current trends in energy use puts the world on track for a rise in temperature of up to 6 degrees C and poses serious threats to global energy security," Tanaka said in a statement. But, he added, "there are cost-effective solutions to avoid severe climate change while also enhancing energy security -- and these are within reach as the new Outlook shows."
The report finds that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions this year could be as much as 3 percent lower due to the economic slump, which coincided with energy demand slackened by the recession.
But the report adds that these CO2 savings will "count for nothing" without a strong agreement coming out of next month's pivotal climate change talks in Copenhagen.
The report predicts a 2 percent drop in world energy demand this year, the first significant drop since 1981, but says it should rebound soon.
IEA forecasts an increase of 2.5 percent annually between 2010 and 2015, then a slowdown as developing economies mature and population growth eases.
Overall, the report's "reference" case points to an increase of 1.5 percent yearly between 2007 and 2030.
A senior IEA official who asked not to be identified said U.S. pressure forced the report's authors to overstate the potential for oil production increases, The Guardian reported yesterday. That official said the United States pushed IEA to underestimate how quickly existing oil fields may be depleted and hype the development of new reserves in order to prevent a scramble to buy remaining sources, according to the newspaper.
Efficiency is key
The $10.4 trillion additional investment by 2030 to meet the report's "450 scenario" -- in which atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions are stabilized around 450 parts per million -- would be dominated by investment in building efficiency, the power sector and transportation. The 450 ppm level would limit the odds of global temperatures rising more than 2 degrees Celsius to 50 percent, IEA said.
IEA finds that end-use efficiency accounts for more than half of emissions reductions in 2030 compared with the reference case. Efficiency, as well as other "decarbonization" investments including a greater share of nuclear and renewable energy generation in the power sector, provides two-thirds of the carbon reductions in 2030, the report says.
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Add CommentSome useful energy constants and quick conversions:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ocean.washington.edu/courses/envir215/energynumbers.pdf
Contrary to this and other similar studies, it is actually economically feasible to within ten years end all world fossil fuel use with nuclear power. putting Big Oil with its campaign donations out of business. Since these studies are generally done under Big Oil's sponsorship it is a requirement for funding that nuclear power be excluded from consideration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCompare some renewable favorites to a nuclear option.
The Hyperion hot tub sized $30 million nuke (122 sales, 2013 delivery). Sealed up, they run for 7 to 10 years then spews a softball sized bit of waste that can be burned in a Gen IV reactor.
Compare the unit to a proposed wind farm in Texas - 240 massive Chinese built multimegawatt wind turbines on 56 sq miles of concrete, roads and steel, Chinese financed for $1.5 billion. 600 megawatts peak, 125 megawatts average, $12000 kilowatt baseload eqv excluding storage, transmission, and millions annually for load balancing natural gas. Same energy as two Hyperion units or electric power as five located in nearby substations for 4% and 10% wind cost.
How about Arcadia Fl, where we have covering 180 acres America's largest solar photovoltaic plant, 5 megawatts baseload equivalent, 180 acres of arsenic,steel and concrete, cost $150 million. 7% the thermal or 20% electric energy of that Hyperion hot tub buried in a substation nearby.
In East Toba, BC, Plutonic Power produces 745 GWh of small hydro annually, 80 megawatts baseload equiv, $660 M. Same energy as a Hyperion unit or electric power as three for between 7 and 20 times the cost. Hyperion units buried under the nearest substation - river run 38 sq miles of forest, concrete, roads, transmission lines and steel.
The Hyperion on energy equivalents is 1% of solar, 2% of small hydro, and 4% of wind cost, a tiny percentage of the civil resources, and provides 24/7 power.
A Hyperion unit weighs in at about 15 tons about the size of 10 vehicles and a lot less complex. 50000 of them would be needed to convert America from fossils to nuclear about the equivalent of a half million vehicles - 5% of America's annual vehicle production.
Renewables make us feel warm and righteous dancing us down the road to the as little as ten years away climate driven economic and even civilization collapse while $1.5 trillion in Hyperion nukes, paid for by ending the America's $1 trillion annual fossil fuel bill could with an extreme effort here and abroad save us.
Note that the IEA is in the news for suppressing the urgency of an imminent peak oil disaster. Once again a strategy designed to lull us into a peak oil crisis with silly renewable schemes, suppressing the easy peasy nuclear power option and making a monstrous profit for IEA's big oil sponsors when the crisis hits.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone here think sethdayal owns shares in Hyperion?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood report, takes into account very realistic assumptions. However, it is unlikely we will invest much :) Pelosi just got her (lawyer+insurance company backed) healthcare bill through, -we will spend trillions rewarding lawyers and insurers now, and trillions in bank bailouts, and trillions in homeowner bailouts..... nope, -I don' t think we have even millions left for energy infrastructure. The report should have contained more details of what happens if we don't spend.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBiomass pyrolysis can curb climate change. It produces biofuels and biochar fertiliser, and can be adapted from the scale of a large farmer to that of cities. One example of biomass is sewerage sludge or manure which the state of California intends to dispose of with green technology. The opportunities for investment are enormous : Five million pyrolysis units are needed to inverse climate change!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor technical details of biomass Pyrolysis, see www.eprida.com and read the technical reports. Personally I will be investing...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow do you really think China (which has surpassed us as the world's largest emitter of CO2) is really going to seriously try to do anything to reduce its voracious consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas? When I visited China last year I was stunned at the unending procession of barges on the Yangtze carrying dirty brown coal to market, even as Three Gorges pumps out tons and tons of hydro KWh.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChina has bought the largest coal field in Australia, and is buying fossil fuel developments in Canada. In China the cities sparkle and glow at night with fantastic light displays on buildings, which lights stay on all night. In China this week seasonally unusual heavy snow collapsed 7,000 buildings.
Do you think the Chinese really believe that CO2 reaching 450 ppm, or 550 ppm, or 650 ppm really makes the world warmer or raises the sea level? Sure they are happy to sell us mercury-containing flourescent light bulbs (as the last GE incandescent light bulb factory closes down) and huge wind power generators, but do they really believe the man-causes-global-warming hysterical bandwagon to nowhere intellectual paralysis that so rages in the West?
The Chinese leadership view is that they can't help it if America's academic and political elites have turned buttt stupid. Any climate deal that we come to them with they will just smile and nod at all the rhetoric and then they will make sure that the bottom line prospers China in some subtle or not-so-subtle way.
BTW, China's northwest really needed all the moisture in that heavy snow.
Chinese political will should not be underestimated. For centuries there was regular mass starvation due, amonst other reasons to overpopulation. China has, if in an unorthodox manner eliminated its population explosion. And its economic policies have produced an unforseeable rapid growth, making it potentially the Worlds most prosperous country. It may therefore implement ecological policy faster than anyone else...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess you are saying that China is not a democracy and that it is therefore easier for them to implement heavy-handed policies and crush all opposition to those policies. By virtue of the fact that they now have many more dollars readily available for spending than we do, it would certainly be easier for them to "invest" trillions in the replacement of fossil fuels by other energy technologies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut my point is that in their investments they don't seem to be aiming for that idealistic goal.
Sarah Palin is busy pointing out that the USA no longer has trillions to throw around on the progressive passions of the moment. We are to the point as a nation where any expensive programs we undertake better be based on rock solid evidence and reasoning, or else the economic suffering in our nation will be long term and severe.
It is bothersome to get lectures from the left on how we need to move to a post-consumerism and post-capitalist society, even as China, India, and all other nations with any common sense seem to be determined to move in the other direction.
It is more bothersome to hear a kind of longing being expressed for the elitist-controlled dictatorship that would enable such ambitious policy agendas to be more easily carried out.