Category: News

Idle wind in China?

Via ClimateProgress:

China finds itself awash in wind turbine factories

China’s massive investment in wind turbines, fueled by its government’s renewable energy goals, has caused the value of the turbines to tumble more than 30 percent from 2004 levels, the vice president of Shanghai Electric Group Corp. said yesterday.

There are now “too many plants,” Lu Yachen said, noting that China is idling as much as 40 percent of its turbine factories.

The surge in turbine investments came in response to China’s goal to increase its power production capacity from wind fivefold in 2020.

The problem is that there are power grid constraints, said Dave Dai, an analyst with CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, noting that construction is slowed because of that obstacle. Currently, only part of China’s power grid is able to accept delivery of electricity produced by renewable energy. “The issues with the grid aren’t expected to ease in the near term,” he said. Still, they “should improve with the development of smart-grid investment over time.”

The constraints may leave as much as 4 gigawatts of windpower generation capacity lying idle, Sunil Gupta, managing director for Asia and head of clean energy at Morgan Stanley, concluded in November.

China has the third-largest windpower market by generating capacity, Shanghai Electric’s Yachen said.

It’s tempting to say that the grid capacity is a typical coordination failure of centrally planned economies. Maybe so, but there are certainly similar failures in market economies – Montana gas producers are currently pipeline-constrained, and the rush to gas in California in the deregulation/Enron days was hardly a model of coordination. (Then again, electric power is hardly a free market.)

The real problem, of course, is that coal gets a free ride in China – as in most of the world – so that the incentives to solve the transmission problem for wind just aren’t there.

Dumb and Dumber

Not to be outdone by Utah, South Dakota has passed its own climate resolution.

They raise the ante – where Utah cherry-picked twelve years of data, South Dakotans are happy with only 8. Even better, their pattern matching heuristic violates bathtub dynamics:

WHEREAS, the earth has been cooling for the last eight years despite small increases in anthropogenic carbon dioxide

They have taken the skeptic claim, that there’s little warming in the tropical troposphere, and bumped it up a notch:

WHEREAS, there is no evidence of atmospheric warming in the troposphere where the majority of warming would be taking place

Nope, no trend here:

Satellite tropospheric temperature, RSS

Satellite tropospheric temperature (RSS, TLT)

Continue reading “Dumb and Dumber”

Legislating Science

The Utah House has declared that CO2 is harmless. The essence of the argument in HJR 12: temperature’s going down, climategate shows that scientists are nefarious twits, whose only interest is in riding the federal funding gravy train, and emissions controls hurt the poor. While it’s reassuring that global poverty is a big concern of Utah Republicans, the scientific observations are egregiously bad:

29 WHEREAS, global temperatures have been level and declining in some areas over the
30 past 12 years;
31 WHEREAS, the “hockey stick” global warming assertion has been discredited and
32 climate alarmists’ carbon dioxide-related global warming hypothesis is unable to account for
33 the current downturn in global temperatures;
34 WHEREAS, there is a statistically more direct correlation between twentieth century
35 temperature rise and Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere than CO2;
36 WHEREAS, outlawed and largely phased out by 1978, in the year 2000 CFC’s began to
37 decline at approximately the same time as global temperatures began to decline;
…
49 WHEREAS, Earth’s climate is constantly changing with recent warming potentially an
50 indication of a return to more normal temperatures following a prolonged cooling period from
51 1250 to 1860 called the “Little Ice Age”;

The list cherry-picks skeptic arguments that rely on a few papers (if that), nearly all thoroughly discredited. There are so many things wrong here that it’s not worth the electrons to refute them one by one. The quality of their argument calls to mind to the 1897 attempt in Indiana to legislate that pi = 3.2. It’s sad that this resolution’s supporters are too scientifically illiterate to notice, or too dishonest to care. There are real uncertainties about climate; it would be nice to see a legislative body really grapple with the hard questions, rather than chasing red herrings.

Climate bill messaging

Interesting insights from pollster Frank Luntz, via Reuters:

“If you really want to scare Americans it’s not about glaciers that are melting or the struggle of the polar bear,” said the pollster and political adviser Frank Luntz, most known for his work with Republicans.

“What scares Americans is the idea that this great technological industry will be developed in China or India rather than America,” said Luntz, who once advised former President George W. Bush’s administration to emphasize that there was a lack of scientific certainty about climate change.

…

Luntz said polls his company conducted late last year showed that a combined 65 percent of respondents stated that climate change exists and action needs to be taken, or that the science was not settled but people should explore ways to cut emissions and adopt clean energy. “This is true of Republicans and Democrats alike,” he said.

…

Backers of the cap-and-trade bill have emphasized climate science too much, and the potential positive results from a clean-energy bill — domestic jobs, a healthier environment, and potentially less money sent to the Middle East for oil — too little, Luntz said.

Wording is important in drumming up support for the bill, he added. Backers should emphasize it would create “American” jobs rather than “green” jobs, while Americans want “reliable” technology more than “smart” technology, he said.

Poll respondents who were Democrats or Republicans believed the most important environmental and economic goal for the United States should be cutting dependence on foreign fuel and halting pollution of the air and water. Ending climate change came in last of the 10 priorities in that category.

Hat tip to Travis Franck.

Danish text analysis

In response to a couple of requests for details, I’ve attached a spreadsheet containing my numbers from the last post on the Danish text: Danish text analysis v3 (updated).

Here it is in words, with a little rounding to simplify:

In 1990, global emissions were about 40 GtCO2eq/year, split equally between developed and developing countries. Due to population disparities, developed emissions per capita were 3.5 times bigger than developing at that point.

The Danish text sets a global target of 50% of 1990 emissions in 2050, which means that the global target is 20 GtCO2eq/year. It also sets a target of 80% (or more) below 1990 for the developed countries, which means their target is 4 GtCO2eq/year. That leaves 16 GtCO2eq/year for the developing world.

According to the “confidential analysis of the text by developing countries” cited in the Guardian, developed countries are emitting 2.7 tonsCO2eq/person/year in 2050, while developing countries emit about half as much: 1.4 tonsCO2eq/person/year. For the developed countries, that’s in line with what I calculate using C-ROADS data and projections. For the developing countries, to get 16 gigatons per year emissions at 1.4 tons per cap, you need 11 billion people emitting. That’s an addition of 6 billion people between 2005 and 2050, implying a growth rate above recent history and way above UN projections.

If you redo the analysis with a more plausible population forecast, per capita emissions convergence is nearly achieved, with developing country emissions per capita within about 25% of developed.

Danish text chart

Note log scale to emphasize proportional differences.

The "Danish text" – bad numbers, missed opportunity?

The blogosphere is filled with reports, originating in the Guardian, of developing countries’ fury over the leaked “Danish text” – a strawdog draft agreement.

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The angry reaction strikes me as a missed opportunity. But more importantly, I think it’s a product of bad analysis, with an inflated population projection for the developing world creating a false impression of failure to achieve emissions convergence.

Here’s what I think is the essence of the text with respect to emissions trajectories:

3. Recalling the ultimate objective of the Convention, the Parties stress the urgency of action on both mitigation and adaptation and recognize the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees C.  In this regard, the Parties:

  • Support the goal of a peak of global emissions as soon as possible, but no later than [2020], acknowledging that developed countries collectively have peaked and that the timeframe for peaking will be longer in developing countries,
  • Support the goal of a reduction of global annual emissions in 2050 by at least 50 percent versus 1990 annual emissions, equivalent to at least 58 percent versus 2005 annual emissions. The Parties contributions towards the goal should take into account common but different responsibility and respective capabilities and a long term convergence of per capita emissions.

7. The developed country Parties commit to individual national economy wide targets for 2020. The targets in Attachment A would expect to yield aggregate emissions reductions by X1 percent by 2020 versus 1990 (X2 percent vs. 2005). The purchase of international offset credits will play a supplementary role to domestic action. The developed country Parties support a goal to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases in aggregate by 80% or more by 2050 versus 1990 (X3 percent versus 2005).
9. The developing country Parties, except the least developed countries which may contribute at their own discretion, commit to nationally appropriate mitigation actions, including actions supported and enabled by technology, financing and capacity-building. The developing countries’ individual mitigation action could in aggregate yield a [Y percent] deviation in [2020] from business as usual and yielding their collective emissions peak before [20XX] and decline thereafter.

These provisions are evidently the source of much of the outrage. Again from the Guardian:

A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text. In particular, it is understood to:

• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;

…

• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

I have limited sympathy with the first point. If the world is to avoid the probability of serious climate change, emissions have to fall below natural uptake. That can’t happen if the developed world is shrinking while developing country emissions grow exponentially, so everyone has to play. You can’t cheat mother nature. If we’re serious about mitigation, the conversation has to be about how to help the developing countries peak and reduce, not whether they will.

The last point, concerning per capita emissions disparities, is actually not stated anywhere in the draft. Notice that the article 9 commitment for developing countries are expressed as variables to be filled in. To figure out what’s going on, I ran the numbers myself. I get about the same answer for the developed countries: 2.75 TonCO2eq/person/year. When multiplied by 1.5 billion people, that’s about 4.1 gigatons per year, leaving a budget of about 15.9 for the developing world (half of 1990 emissions of about 20 GtCO2eq, less 4.1). Dividing that by 1.44 yields an expected population in the developing world of 11 billion. That’s a bonkers population forecast, 2 billion above the UN high variant projection. If it came true, it would likely be a disaster in itself. More importantly, the per capita emissions ratios would be expressing a strange notion of (in)equity: the nearly 6 billion people added from 2005-2050 in the developing world would be emitting more than twice as much as all the people in the developing world.

If you rerun the numbers with a more sensible population forecast, with about 7.4 billion people in the developing world, the numbers are 2.75 and 2.15 tonsCO2eq/person/year in the developed and developing countries, respectively.  (UN mid variant population projection is 7.9 billion, but I’m sticking with C-ROADS data for convenience, which has slightly different regional definitions). In other words, convergence is at hand: the world has gone from 3.5:1 emissions per cap in 1990 to 1.28:1 – a rather stunning achievement, not something to get mad about. In addition, it’s not physically possible to do much better than that for the developing world, because the developed world represents a small slice of the global population in 2050. For example, even if the developed world could reach zero emissions in 2050, the remaining emissions budget would only permit emissions of 2.7 tonsCO2eq/person/year in the developing countries.

Even if the high population projection came true, I still think it would be a mistake for developing countries to get mad, because there’s article 20:

20. The Parties share the view that the strengthened financial architecture should be able to handle gradually scaled up international public support. International public finance support to developing countries [should/shall] reach the order of [X] billion USD in 2020 on the basis of appropriate increases in mitigation and adaptation efforts by developing countries.

Rather than asking for higher emissions, developing countries could ask for a bigger [X] to compensate for smaller per capita emissions. Then they’d have help moving towards a low-carbon economy, with all the cobenefits that entails. They wouldn’t have to follow the developed world down a fossil-fired, energy intensive path that’s ultimately a dead end. Maybe the real anger arises from the difficulty of getting meaningful financial terms, but that’s the conversation we should be having if we want a shot at 2C or below.

Check my math. If you think I’m right, spread the word. It would be a shame if the possibility of a climate agreement were derailed by a flawed analysis of a draft document. If you think I’m wrong, please comment, and I’ll take another look.

Update: I’ve published the numbers behind this in my next post.