Horse in the Race


Yesterday I was having a polite conversation with a climate alarmist and even though all through the interaction you could sense a feeling of superiority from the "settled science" promoter, at the end she stated this respecting energy: "I don't have a horse in the race."

Well, if increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are really an issue, then we most definitely need a horse in the race. CO2 emissions won't go down just by "believing" in human caused global warming.

No, where the rubber meets the road we'll have to replace high carbon intensity primary energy with lower carbon alternatives.

Since hydro is pretty much maxxed out as a percentage of global primary energy and renewables need pairing power plants that end up producing most of the energy on an annual basis, we essentially have two options to reduce the CO2 intensity of primary energy:

1. Replace coal with natural gas. When used for electricity generation, natural gas produces close to half the CO2 emissions of coal. This is not a footnote; this is a game changer. Yes, replacing oil with natural gas would also reduce emissions although not as dramatically. Some countries already have large fleets of natural gas powered vehicles.

2. Replace coal and, eventually even natural gas with nuclear which is very low (although not zero) in CO2 emissions.

So, if we really care about reducing the CO2 intensity of the global economy we have to leave the philosophical ivory tower, get our hands dirty and name names respecting primary energy: natural gas and nuclear. 

We need to have a horse (or two) in the race and we have to cheer them to the finish line.


Thank you.

Feel free to add to the conversation in Twitter: @luisbaram

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Starved for CO2

Image
This article is speculation, and yet, it is something to ponder about. During millions of years, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere had been dropping. Actually the drop had been quite dramatic between the late Jurassic (more than 2,000 ppm) to recent times (less than 400 ppm). This is no fine tuning, the difference is in the range of five to one. Important reserves of carbon in the form of ancient life remains had been trapped "forever" inside the Earth. These reserves were in the form of coal, oil and natural gas. No natural mechanism could pump back to the atmosphere those "forever" sequestered amounts of carbon. No natural mechanism...  but could the Earth naturally create unnatural occurrences to return to the biosphere that long lost carbon or, would the Earth itself slowly starve due to insufficient CO2 in the atmosphere? It was inconceivable for any plant or animal species of the time to actually extract billions of tons of ca...
Read more

550.org

Image
We are launching an alternate organization to 350.org because we believe that just wishing for something to happen (in other words for the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to go back to 350 ppm) is absurd in the light that we break a new CO2 emissions record every year. So, it makes no sense to invest time, effort and money in pursuing an impossible objective.  Let's state here in what we firmly believe: nobody alive today will ever see again 350 ppm. So, if not 350, where are we headed?  We are "easily" headed for 550 ppm, thus the name of our non-profit. Before we proceed further, let us state why we believe our non-profit will be more attractive than 350.org: We will not, ever, under any circumstances ask for donations. Hell, we won't even accept them even if somebody volunteers some money. We won't be dogmatic. We won't believe blindly in models, organizations (e.g. IPCC) or the Pope. We will strive to actually list...
Read more

Going Solar

Image
Some people insist that solar PV has achieved "grid parity" but to claim this they obviously have to consider grid connected PV. The real cost of solar PV is masked when grid connected. In order to better understand the real cost of solar PV, let's make a simplified exercise here. What would be needed to go off grid? The following: Obviously, the solar PV panels. Storage batteries A gasoline electric generator (unless you plan to store heroic amounts of electricity, you would need the backup generator). We'll consider the following parameters in our installation (feel free to substitute your own numbers): Annual solar capacity factor: 18%. Cost of the PV installation (including inverters, installation, etc.): $3 per Watt. We'll use Tesla storage batteries (the 7kW version) at a cost of $6,000 including installation. Solar panel useful life: 20 years. Batteries useful life: 10 years. Annual electricity usage: 8,400 kWh. So, this ho...
Read more