Smith, a Republican, represents the 21st District of Texas, which includes his hometown of San Antonio, and chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. I met him a few weeks ago at a hearing on climate held by the Subcommittee on the Environment. He was the consummate gentleman. Despite the fact that I was testifying as a witness for the Democratic Party, he was cordial and gentle in his questions. I thought, Now there’s a reasonable man.

That impression of reasonableness was soon undercut when I learned that Smith is leading the charge in new legislation that would mandate a new layer of political review at the National Science Foundation (NSF) before granting funding for research projects. This is a bad and radical idea for any number of reasons, including its violation of a tried-and-true conservative maxim: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The U.S. R&D program is the envy of the world. The United States receives more patents than any other country, and families from all over the globe spend huge sums of money to send their sons and daughters to American universities to study with our researchers and work in our labs. Much of that effort is grounded in the funding of grants by the NSF. Smith’s legislation would undermine all that. 

Another reason you don’t want to have politicians mucking around in the nuts and bolts of science is that they often have a shaky grasp of the science at best. A case in point, Rep. Smith’s understanding of the state of climate science. 

Lamar Smith’s Take on Climate Science

On Sunday the Washington Post published an op-ed written by Congressman Smith entitled “Overheated rhetoric on climate change doesn’t make good politics.” Can’t argue with that premise. Nor can one argue with his conclusion that we “think critically about the challenge before … [d]esigning an appropriate public policy response” to climate change.

What one can argue with is the spin he puts on climate science to justify his conclusion that there is no urgency to begin that response. How so? Here are three examples.

No Recent Warming

Rep. Smith rolls out the well-worn — but factually incorrect — meme floating out there that “global temperatures have held steady over the past 15 years.” It is true that the rate of warming in the 2000s has slowed, but concluding that global warming has halted would be a misread of the evidence. While warming in the atmosphere has slowed, the oceans continue to absorb heat, and some of that heat will undoubtedly eventually find its way into the atmosphere.

Secondly, the statement that temperatures have held steady is not strictly true. As illustrated below, a simple linear regression of average global temperatures running from 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 or 2000 to 2012 all produce a positive trend — that is, the temperatures have not held “steady” but have tended to increase over time. Depending upon whether you start the regression on a relatively warm or cool year, the trend is smaller or larger, but they are all positive.

Temperature data from the HadCRUT4 annual global dataset.

However, there is a problem. The time period used to calculate the trends is quite short (< 20 years), while the natural variability from year to year is quite large. As a result, it is not possible to establish the statistical significance of these trends. And so, we cannot statistically eliminate the possibility that there has been no temperature change. This is very different from saying there has been no temperature increase. A subtle point that a politician might miss, but significant nonetheless.

So what’s going on? A lot of the slowdown in warming is likely related to the changing cycles of La Ninas and El Ninos. For a nice explanation of this, check out this Skeptical Science post.

U.S. Emissions Irrelevant

Then there’s the argument that the United States is simply not a player in the global carbon emissions game and thus doesn’t need to be a contributor to lowering global emissions. Hard to swallow given that the United States is one) the second largest emitter of carbon, accounting for about 17 percent of global emissions, and two) the largest contributor to the current stock of global warming carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

How hard to swallow? Well, open wide — here’s how Smith makes the argument. U.S. emissions in the coming decade are projected to be relatively flat while emissions from developing countries, and especially China, are projected to increase significantly. It’s those other countries, the argument goes, that will be responsible for most of the future global warming, and so there’s no need for countries like the United States to do anything.

To bolster such an argument, Rep. Smith refers to a white paper [pdf] published by Paul Knappenberger of the Science and Public Policy Institute, a nonprofit that discounts the role of humans in and challenges the scientific consensus on climate change.

Using model simulations (which Smith himself discounts as unreliable), Knappenberger concludes that “If the U.S. as a whole stopped emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions immediately, the ultimate impact on projected global temperature rise would be … approximately 0.08°C by the year 2050.” Yikes, only 0.08 degrees Celsius! That’s tiny! Great news, Americans, the United States is off the hook, right? Well, that’s what Smith would have you believe.

The problem is that such calculations focusing on a single country are misleading. Global warming is a global problem requiring participation of all major emitters. No single country can do it alone. And from the opposite point of view, any country can justify not participating by looking only at its contribution to global warming. For example, take the big bad carbon emitter China. Extrapolating from Knappenberger‘s calculations and emissions projections for China from a report [pdf] by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, I estimate that if China completely stopped its emissions in 2050, global warming would decrease in 2050 by about 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius depending on the emissions scenario.*

That’s larger than the U.S. contribution but not by all that much. One could imagine a Chinese official, perhaps even one who chairs the Politburo’s version of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, using this argument to similarly argue that there is no need for China to lower its emissions.

As I have previously written:

“As long as individual countries focus on their own little contribution, nothing will ever happen. It’s sort of like this:

You’re at a party with 29 other revelers. The beer just ran out and $30 is needed to get more beer. The hat is passed around for contributions, but each person thinks, ‘If I put in a dollar all it will add is 1/30th or 3 percent of what is needed. That’s a tiny amount, too small to worry about … I think I’ll just pass.’ And no one adds to the hat, and no beer gets bought.”

IPCC Says No Severe Weather Effect?

Finally there’s Rep. Smith’s statement that “last year’s IPCC report stat[es] that there is ‘high agreement’ among leading experts that trends in weather disasters, floods, tornados and storms cannot be attributed to climate change.” I presume by last year’s IPCC report, Smith is referring to: “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.”

While it’s true that the report discusses a number of weather-related trends in which scientists have yet to see a global warming signature — such as hail, tornadoes and river flooding — there are others — including temperature and extreme precipitation — where they noted high or medium confidence that the impact of global warming was already visible. Looks like Rep. Smith got that one wrong as well.

In summary I’m all for avoiding “overheated rhetoric,” but how about we include misstatements about and misrepresentations of science in that category? And oh yeah, leave NSF out of politics.

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End Note

* China’s avoided contribution was calculated to a first approximation by using the maximum and minimum emissions scenarios in the Lawrence Berkeley Lab report [pdf] between 2015 and 2050. The avoided temperature rise stemming from eliminating that estimate of cumulative CO2 emissions was calculated using a metric developed in a paper by H. Damon Matthews and co-authors discussed here.

Bottleneck to the Northeast

It could be a marriage made in economic heaven. Standing on one side of the altar is the northeastern United States, hungry for more natural gas, a fuel whose prices in the region are projected to reach five-year highs this summer. On the other side stand energy companies with growing supplies of natural gas, in large part as a result of fracked shale gas [pdf], looking for a market.

So what’s the holdup? Transportation. In order to consummate this supply-and-demand betrothal, the energy companies have to be able to deliver; that is, get the product from its point of origin (in the Marcellus shale and elsewhere) to northeastern markets. And there just isn’t enough pipeline capacity to accomplish the union. (See here, here and here [pdf].)

Obvious Solution: Build

They say that where there’s love there’s a way. And in this case the way seems pretty obvious: Build more pipelines to deliver natural gas to the Northeast. And in fact that’s exactly what’s happening. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that “[o]ver half of U.S. natural gas pipeline projects in 2012 were in the Northeast. And more are planned in the coming years.” (See also here.)

And that’s where our story of pipeline controversy comes in.

There’s been a flurry of pipeline construction activity in the past few years, with much of last year’s builds all happening in the Northeast. (Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration)

The Spectre of Spectra

The pipeline in question, “a 20-mile expansion of the Company’s Texas Eastern Transmission and Algonquin Gas Transmission interstate pipeline systems,” would bring natural gas across the Hudson River from New Jersey to lower Manhattan, delivering the fuel to NYC and surrounding counties.

The company proposing the pipeline is Spectra Energy, a spin-off of Duke Energy that proclaims to be “committed to making sustainable choices.”

And indeed there is much to commend the planned pipeline. It will bring a relatively clean fossil fuel to the Northeast, a fuel that releases a lot less air toxics and less carbon dioxide per unit of energy than coal or oil (as long as there is relatively little leakage). And Spectra claims that the construction will have minimal environmental impacts:

• The pipeline, according to Spectra, will have little impact on underdeveloped lands as it will “be constructed within public roadways and commercial/industrial areas and parallel to existing utility rights-of-way. In fact, 94% of the pipeline is located in commercial/industrial areas.”
• Installation of the pipeline will use a technique called Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD), “an efficient subsurface method of installing pipelines without using traditional trenching methods, helping to avoid any unnecessary impacts to the surface and providing an additional layer of safety due to the depth of the pipe. “

And then there’s the jobs thing. In our economic climate, anything that creates new jobs is a sure political winner, and Spectra claims the project will produce more than 5,200 new jobs up through construction.

There are some powerful supporters of the project, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg among them. Part of that support probably arises from the fact that the mayor’s PlaNYC 2030 — his blueprint for greening the city — will require that the city have access to a lot more natural gas to lower carbon emissions and clean up air pollution from residential boilers that are currently using dirty heating oil to heat apartments and water.

And things are looking good for Spectra. In May 2012, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the project, and within two months construction had begun. By December, the construction of the pipeline underneath the Hudson River was completed [pdf]. The pipeline’s completion is anticipated in November 2013.

So What’s Not to Like About the Pipeline? How about Ka-boom?

But there are a lot of people who are very, very unhappy about the pipeline and are doing everything they can to stop it. Among the opponents are a host of environmental groups and Jerramiah Healy, the mayor of Jersey City, the New Jersey locale where the pipeline makes its way underneath the Hudson toward New York.

Why? For some environmentalists, the issue is the source of the natural gas being carried in the pipeline. A good deal of it will be natural gas borne of fracking (in which a mixture of sand, water and chemicals are injected at high pressures underground to break up the rock), and because of concerns about the environmental impact of that process (see here and here for example), they see the gas as being tainted.

Stop the pipeline, they reason, and make shale gas less profitable and thus less attractive to potential frackers.

There are also concerns about the pipeline bringing radioactive radon gas into the homes of New Yorkers. (See also here, $ub req’ed.)

But by far the most divisive and emotional issue centers around safety. The Spectra pipeline is roughly 30 inches in diameter, will operate under high pressure (200 to 1,200 pounds per square inch), and is expected to deliver some 800 million cubic feet of gas per day. When mishaps occur with high pressure pipelines, the consequences can be severe. Chances are, even if you’re not a newshound, you’re familiar with the 2010 explosion in San Bruno, California, an event that caused eight deaths and lots of destruction and is still being investigated two and a half years later. Other accidents have occurred in recent years in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan,and Ohio.*

Huge explosions in relatively rural areas are bad enough, but, opponents of the Spectra pipeline ask, what if such an explosion occurred in the high population centers of Jersey City or lower Manhattan?

The Sane Energy Project, whose mission is “to fight fossil fuel and nuclear infrastructure, and encourage renewable infrastructure,” has an answer. The group argues that “[t]he pipeline is a direct threat to the public health, safety, property values and economy of eastern New Jersey and New York City, especially to the residents, businesses, galleries, schools, religious and cultural institutions of downtown Manhattan, Staten Island, and Jersey City.”  The group’s arguments continue:

“Should the pipeline or vault explode on the Manhattan side of the Hudson, the potential fire radius would encompass three historic districts, including: 10 irreplaceable Landmarked buildings; 10 schools or daycare centers; 8 playgrounds, including a large playground on the pier directly adjacent to the Sanitation Pier (the entry point of the pipeline); 13 churches or religious institutions; more than 28 art and cultural centers (including the Ground Zero Museum Workshop); the Hudson River Greenway, shoreline and West Side Highway; more than 38 restaurants; countless boutiques, hotels, businesses and residences.”

Is that alarmist or just plain sane? The way things are going, it looks like we’re going to find out.

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End Note

* In terms of track record, it is the medium-sized distribution lines that have the most incidents and fatalities.

We start with Keystone. On Monday the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in [pdf] on the Keystone XL pipeline project. Its conclusion? ”Insufficient information.”

A Hole in Proponents’ Arguments for the Proposed Pipeline

Remember the draft supplemental environmental impact statement* on TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that would allow crude from Canadian tar sands to flow to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries? Prepared for the State Department, which must OK the project because it crosses an international border, the draft statement concluded with music to the ears of the pipeline’s proponents: “The proposed project … would [pose] no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed Project route.” (See my post for more on the draft statement.)

After it was released on March 1, interested parties and agencies had 45 days to submit comments on the draft and the pipeline, which has become one of the most contentious environmental issues in Obama’s presidency. That public comment period ended at midnight on Monday, and among the reported tens of thousands of comments (some say over a million) that poured in during the comment period was a seven-page reaction from the Environmental Protection Agency submitted just under the wire.

The agency’s assessment in short: “Based on our review, we have rated the [draft supplemental environmental impact statement] DSEIS as E0-2 (‘Environmental Objections – Insufficient Information’).”

Need help on the government-speak? E0-2 or Environmental Objection #2 refers, as indicated, to an objection on environmental grounds because of “insufficient information” or because, as not indicated, the EPA has “identified new reasonably available alternatives that are within the spectrum of alternatives analyzed in the draft EIS, which could reduce the environmental impacts of the action.” Did you get all that? If not, basically EPA is saying that it doesn’t buy the State Department’s assessment because it failed to consider all the options.

One Sticking Point: Estimated Emissions from Tar Sands Oil

A major EPA objection to the impact statement concerned the State Department’s assessment that the pipeline itself, as a conduit for transporting bitumen from Canadian tar sands, would have little impact on greenhouse gases. The stated reasoning for such a conclusion: Even if the pipeline were not built, the tar sands oil production would be largely unaffected as other means of transport (e.g., rail, other pipelines) would be used to bring the heavy crude to market.

EPA was not convinced:

“We note that the discussion in the DSEIS regarding energy markets, while informative, is not based on an updated energy-economic modeling effort. The DSEIS includes a discussion of rail logistics and the potential growth of rail as a transport option, however we recommend that the Final EIS provide a more careful review of the market analysis and rail transport options. … recognizing the potential for much higher per barrel rail shipment costs than presented in the DSEIS. This analysis should consider how the level and pace of oil sands crude production might be affected by higher transportation costs and the potential for congestion impacts to slow rail transport of crude.”

EPA also noted that the State Department’s evaluation of pipeline alternatives is not “sufficient to enable a meaningful comparison to the proposed route and other alternatives.” In addition, the agency reported that it would like to see a more rigorous analysis of the existing pipeline corridor, as it avoids not only the Sands Hills aquifer (which was one of the sticking points of the first proposed route) but the Ogallala aquifer as well. (See related interactive map of the route: “Keystone XL: Mapping the Flow of Tar Sands Oil.”)

What’s Comes Next?

So what happens now is more hurry up and wait. The release of the draft environmental impact statement and the conclusion of the public comment period following that release means that the preparation of a final impact statement can now officially begin. That “Final Supplemental EIS,” said State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell, would include “additional analysis and incorporate public comments received on the Draft SEIS.” As for all those many public comments, State has promised to publish each and every one. ($ub req’ed) There’s no word yet on when.

And remember all this is for just the environmental assessment. In all, eight federal agencies [pdf] will need to weigh in on the project before State renders its decision.

Whither U.S. CO2 Emissions?

While we’re on the subject of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. it is relevant to note that the Energy Information Administration (EIA) has begun releasing its Annual Energy Outlook for 2013. One item published last week was the forecast for U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions through 2040. This projection along with EIA’s past projections between 2004 and 2012 is illustrated below.

AEO: Annual Energy Outlook, from EIA’s archived forecasts issued in a given year and its latest, AEO 2013 (Additional info here.) U.S. commitment in the Copenhagen Accord [pdf]

But lest we get carried away congratulating ourselves, the news from the EIA’s 2013 projection is not all roses. While U.S. emissions have been falling since the economic downturn of 2008, EIA projects they will begin a modest upturn in 2017 that will continue through 2040.

And even given the sizable (some might say remarkable) decrease in our projected emissions over the next few decades, as compared to earlier projections, the current forecast falls quite short of the emissions reductions President Obama committed to as part of the Copenhagen Accord [pdf], as illustrated in the above graphic. (See also here.)

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons EPA is concerned about the potential emissions from tar sands. Of course the State Department’s answer could be that if EIA just keeps ratcheting down its emissions projections, maybe we’ll meet our emissions commitment without even trying. So why worry about a little bit of extra greenhouse gas emissions (on the order of about 19 million metric tons annually, according to EPA estimates) from tar sands? Why indeed.

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End Note

* Because of a previously proposed route for the pipeline, which had its own environmental impact statement (which was ultimately rejected), the statement issued in March is a “supplemental” environmental impact statement [pdf]. A final supplemental statement will be issued after more analysis and review.

Peak Oil Question Remains, Debate Continues

Ever since M. King Hubbert advanced the theory of peak oil in 1956, experts and non-experts alike have been debating about timing and relevance. (See here, here, here and here.) Hubbert’s argument seems like a no-brainer. Oil is a finite natural resource, so there must come a time when oil production peaks and begins to decline. The question is, when? And for a world economy that is largely fueled by oil, that “when” question is quite germane. If peak oil hits while oil demand is rising, it could spell worldwide economic disaster.

The world of oil punditry is replete with predictors of an imminent arrival of peak oil. (See here, here, here and here.) Folks bullish on oil, on the other hand, have long held that that time is way in the future, that there is plenty of oil in the ground and that whenever supply begins to be outstripped by demand, new technologies will be developed to get at what had been deemed to be economically unrecoverable.

History Shows That When Oil Prices Rise, Oil Production Responds

The historical verdict, so far, seems to be in favor of the oil industry bulls. Each time dwindling supplies and/or surging demand have caused oil prices to rise, the economics of high oil prices have spurred the development of new sources to quell the imbalance.

The latest ups and downs in the economy and the oil industry seem to follow that scenario. Remember the skyrocketing gasoline prices of 2005 and 2006 before the July 2008 peak? As in previous oil shocks, there were warnings that peak oil had arrived and that we should all get ready for even higher prices at the pump.

But that didn’t happen. First we were “saved” by the economic crash of 2008 — which some argue was actually “a direct result of peak oil.” The crash caused demand for oil and therefore prices as well to fall. Lots of folks, myself included, assumed that the reprieve from the economic slowdown was temporary and that oil prices would rise, possibly even more sharply than before once the global economy got going again.

(Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration)

Fortunately that hasn’t happened. The economic recovery, while tepid, is underway. And while oil prices have recovered somewhat, they have not hit the July 2008 peak, let alone shot above it. (See related: “Outlook for U.S. Gas Prices: A Bit Lower This Summer“)

So what’s going on? As you might expect, there are a variety of opinions. Some continue to warn that a spike in prices at the pump is just around the corner — for example see these predictions (here and here).

Others claim that we are seeing the same demand-and-supply response that we’ve seen in the past. The runup of oil prices in 2007 and 2008 sparked new investments that have increased production and moderated prices. And this argument is supported by data showing an approximate 10 percent uptick in world oil supplies since 2009.

A New Paradigm Proposed

But now two new reports — “Global Oil Demand Growth — The End is Nigh” by Seth Kleinman et al. of Citigroup and “The End of an Era: The Death of Peak Oil” [pdf] from Robin Wehbé et al. of the Boston Company — argue that something entirely different and rather unprecedented is underway. Both reports argue that we have entered a new era, one characterized not by the spectre of a supply peak, but by a demand peak that will assure that demand will not outstrip supply for quite some time to come.

The reasons for peak oil demand:

1. Fuel economy. Recall the new fuel efficiency standards (known as CAFE, short for corporate average fuel economy) promulgated by the Obama administration with the support of the automotive industry? They will certainly have a moderating influence on U.S. oil demand. But the United States isn’t alone. Fuel economy standards are tightening throughout the world, including in China, the European Union, Japan and Canada. Fuel efficiency is expected to rise for trucks as well. The net result — global fuel efficiency on cars and trucks, which has languished for decades, will increase annually by about 2.5 percent.
2. Substitution of natural gas for oil. The authors project that the revolution in natural gas supplies wrought by shale extraction will have a major ripple effect on the oil industry. Huge new supplies of natural gas [pdf] will continue to lead to low prices in natural gas and that in turn will lead to substitution of natural gas for oil. (Indeed this has already begun.) As a result. we’ll see a shift in the following:
   • Transportation, especially for trucks and other large vehicles currently powered by diesel.
   • Power generation. Though not very common in the United States, oil is still used to generate electricity. For example some 8 percent of New York State’s electricity is generated from oil, and in 2008, worldwide, about a trillion kilowatts of electricity (out of a total of 19 trillion kilowatts) was generated from oil. Kleinman et al. predict that is about to change as old oil-fueled power plants are replaced by gas-fired ones.
   • Petrochemicals too. Currently the petrochemical industry primarily uses oil as a feedstock. But natural gas, especially so-called wet gas, contains ethane, which can also serve as a feedstock for chemical synthesis. Low natural gas prices have already begun the substitution that the authors predict will accelerate into the future.

Of course for this to happen on a global scale, natural gas must become a global commodity that can be traded and transported from producing regions to consumers. No problem, say Kleinman et al. — the answer will be liquid natural gas (LNG). They opine:

“[O]nce the next wave of LNG export projects comes to market … global LNG markets should loosen materially. This raises the prospect of lower spot prices, and a greater incentive for gas for oil substitution to spread and accelerate globally. Hence, the assumption that substitution outside of the US starts to accelerate post 2016.”

But that’s not all. The Boston Company goes even further, arguing that the emergence of peak oil demand is being also driven by an unprecedented shift in consumer behavior. For years the accepted wisdom has been that consumer demand was inelastic with respect to price — in other words, even if prices change, demand remains much the same. The Boston Company report points to data since 1970 showing that each time the price of oil rose above 3 or 6 percent of gross domestic product, demand was reduced or quickly curtailed. Thus, they argue, price, not supply, now limits demand.

Suffice it to say — and I’ll note this is par for the course when it comes to the peak oil debate — not everyone agrees with these predictions (see chart).

Citigroup forecasts a very modest increase in demand that plateaus near 2020 (see also Fig. 1, page 2) while BP and the International Energy Agency (IEA) project a larger, steadily increasing demand of 0.7-0.8 percent. I expect the projected demand growth in the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecast will be revised downward in the report due out this spring. ExxonMobil projects a 1.5 percent annual increase in demand from 2010 to 2025. (See End Note for sources.**)

Could Climate Be a Winner?

At least on the face of it, the projections of Citigroup and the Boston Company if they pan out would be good news for the climate. The world is replete with hydrocarbons and it may very well be true that, as the oil bulls have been telling us, technological innovation will make it possible for us to economically pull all the hydrocarbons in their various forms out of the ground to burn them if we so choose. And it certainly seems like advances in fracking and horizontal drilling have moved us a big step closer in that regard.

The questions we should be asking ourselves are: Do we want to pull all this stuff out of the ground, and How much is too much before the climate price is too dear to pay for cheap oil?

The fact that oil demand may be flattening out is a positive sign for the climate; at least the near-term pressure to pull all the oil out of the ground as fast as possible has lessened. (A caveat here: some of the oil demand flattening is due to switching from one fossil fuel — oil — to another — natural gas, which while cleaner than oil, still puts carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when burned.)

Interestingly enough, this peak oil demand phenomenon, if it comes to pass, will have occurred of its own accord without a global accord on carbon emissions. Is the system somehow correcting itself on its own? If so, the “system” better get busy because there’s a lot more to do — not just flattening demand but actually turning the demand curve downward, and not just for oil but for all hydrocarbons. Tall order. Maybe the “system’s” response will be to engineer a global climate treaty. And if that happens, who gets the credit?

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End Note
** Sources for chart: “Global Oil Demand Growth — The End is Nigh,” Seth Kleinman et al., Citigroup, March 2013. Energy Outlook 2030, BP, January 2013 (data [xls]). North America leads shift in global energy balance, IEA says in latest World Energy Outlook, International Energy Agency, November 2012. “International Energy Outlook 2011,” U.S. EIA, September 19, 2011. “The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2040,” ExxonMobil, 2013.

Trouble Brewing

In a news article published in Science magazine last week, journalist Robert Service writes: “This year is shaping up to be decisive for ‘cellulosic’ ethanol made from corn stalks and other agricultural waste, as oil companies and the ethanol industry clash over government mandates for the automotive fuel.”

What’s going on? Let’s start with a brief primer on the use of ethanol in America’s automobile.

As a libation, ethanol’s been around for a long, long time. As a fuel, it dates back to 1826 when it was first used in an internal combustion engine. Ethanol was also the fuel that ran the 1908 version of the Ford Model T. But “the decreasing cost of oil (and US prohibition)” among other factors turned Ford’s “fuel of the future” into a fuel of the past and, with the exception of World War II [pdf], there it remained for much of the mid-20th century where the fuel of choice on America’s roadways was ethanol-free gasoline.

Congress’s Love Affair With Ethanol

Starting in the late 1970s, however, ethanol began to creep its way back into our fuel tanks, at first in response to oil shortages [pdf] and the Clean Air Act’s mandated phase-out of leaded gasoline (ethanol supplanted lead as an additive to enhance octane). Demand for ethanol increased as Congress began actively encouraging and then mandating its use in cars. For example, a 1978 tax break for ethanol-blended gasoline was followed by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, whose requirements included the presence of an oxygenated compound such as ethanol in gasoline to produce cleaner automobile emissions and thus cleaner air.

More recently, Congress upped the ethanol ante with two renewable fuel standards: the 2005 Energy Policy Act “required 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel to be blended into gasoline by 2012” and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 greatly expanded the program by:

• increasing the volume of renewable fuels from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons by 2022,
• adding more renewable fuel categories each with separate volume requirements (including cellulosic ethanol targets of 100 million gallons in 2010 increasing to 16 billion gallons in 2022), and
• applying life cycle greenhouse gas performance threshold standards to ensure that each category of renewable fuel emits less greenhouse gas emissions than the petroleum fuel it replaces.

Why the Love?

Knowing what’s behind Congress’s passion for ethanol as a fuel is not quite as inscrutable as knowing what sparks romantic love, so let’s look at some possibilities. First and perhaps foremost, ethanol is a homegrown energy source and one that was aided by a healthy tariff on imported ethanol that excluded Brazilian ethanol from competing in the U.S. market. It’s reasonable to assume Congress was considering national security. But that’s not all.

The desired air-quality improvements from the 1990 CAA were to be achieved, in part, by adding ethanol or a similarly oxygenated compound to the hydrocarbon chains of fossil fuels thus adding oxygen and encouraging a more complete and cleaner burn. But I’d take that with a bit salt. The evidence (see here and here) that that ethanol mandate actually led to significantly improved air quality is pretty thin.

That brings us to the renewable fuel standards. As summarized in a report [pdf] by the Congressional Research Service, the 2005 and 2007 mandates were aimed at alleviating our “increasing dependence on foreign sources of crude oil, concerns over global climate change, and the desire to promote domestic rural economies.” But like the air-quality mandate, there’s room for some skepticism here. For example, the climate benefits of ethanol have been challenged by a number of investigators (see here, here and here).

Which brings us to the other reason listed above: desire to promote domestic rural economies. Here I think we’ve found pay dirt — but not for any old rural economy, just the ones that grow corn.

Virtually all of today’s U.S.-produced ethanol comes from corn. So ethanol mandates raise the demand for corn — making it a commodity wanted not only for food but also for fuel. And so the result? Corn prices rise, and American corn growers benefit. Voting for the mandate means making the very powerful National Corn Growers Association happy. Voting against it, let alone trying to remove it, means risking the wrath of the lobby.

And then there’s Iowa. Ever wonder why in recent memory there’s near-unanimous support for ethanol mandates among presidential candidates? Could it have anything to do with the all-important caucuses in Iowa, a state also known as the Corn State where 90 percent of its land is agricultural?

With all those reasons going for it, you’d think the 2007 ethanol mandate would be sitting pretty. In fact, as noted by Service in that Science article, the mandate is in serious trouble.

Problem #1: Plenty of Ethanol, Not Enough Gasoline

Times change. In 2007 a trend was clear — gasoline consumption was on the rise. For an ethanol mandate to have teeth over time, the amount of ethanol produced, Congress reasoned, would also need to increase over time. And so federal mandates [pdf] required that the total volume of renewable fuel would increase (from 9 billion gallons to 36 billion gallons) with corn ethanol maxing out at 15 billion gallons per year.

The problem is that gasoline consumption did not increase as anticipated (see graphic below). First came the economic downturn of 2008 and then a hankering for more fuel-efficient cars. As a result, since peaking in late 2007, U.S. gasoline consumption has slowly declined (see graphic).

Used with permission by McClellan Financial Publications

That’s generally good news. But for the ethanol mandate … not so much. The vast majority of U.S. cars are designed to use a fuel mix that contains no more than 10 percent ethanol, and most gas stations are set up for gasoline with a maximum ethanol content of 10 percent. So consider what happens if total gasoline consumption goes down while the total amount of ethanol required to be mixed with the gasoline increases? Eventually you hit what is known as the “ethanol blend wall” where any addition of ethanol to the mix will result in a fuel that is more than 10 percent ethanol. (See here and here [pdf].)

So how close is that ethanol blend wall? For all intents and purposes we’ve hit it. In 2012, the Energy Information Administration reports [pdf], the average ethanol content in U.S. gasoline was 9.7 percent. (See graphic).

(From EIA’s Biofuels Issues and Trends [pdf], October 2012)

Suffice it to say, something’s gotta give. Either American cars need a mandated retrofit that would allow for a higher percentage of ethanol (just how expensive such a retrofit would be is up for debate — see here and here) or the 2007 mandate needs to be relaxed.

Problem #2: Not Enough of the Good Stuff (Cellulosic Ethanol)

Corn ethanol, like most alcoholic beverages, is produced from a plant’s starches and sugars. (Ethanol is “denatured “ to make it undrinkable.) But it’s corn ethanol’s cousin cellulosic ethanol – which is derived from a plant’s inedible cellulose (a major rigid component of plants) — that’s generally viewed as the ethanol of the future. Why? Plants have far more cellulose than starches and sugars. And so there’s much more stuff available to produce cellulosic ethanol than corn ethanol. At least in theory we can produce a lot more cellulosic ethanol than corn ethanol.

That’s in theory. In practice it hasn’t yet worked out that way. Turning cellulose into ethanol is a difficult task, made even more difficult with commercial viability as a goal. Giving a legislative leg-up is one way to overcome the hurdles of developing a commercial enterprise — and that’s essentially what the federally mandated increases in cellulosic ethanol in gasoline blends were intended in part to do but they have not worked.

The industry has simply not been able to make enough cellulosic ethanol to meet the mandates. In 2012, for example, instead of the 8.65 million gallons required by the Environmental Protection Agency, just 20,000 gallons of cellulosic ethanol were produced. Normally refiners would be required to purchase credits to make up the difference, but the American Petroleum Industry took EPA to court — and won (see decision [pdf]). EPA later eliminated the 2012 requirements ($ub req’ed). Meanwhile, the mandated totals for 2013 are expected to be challenged in court, even though 2013 is the year cellulosic fuel is expected by the biofuel industry to make good.

The Ethanol Mandate on the Ropes

So what’s in store? In his article in Science Service predicts a knock-down, drag-out fight “pitting the world’s largest oil and car companies against giant agricultural firms and Midwest farmers.” And the oil industry is primed for the kill with Charles Drevna, president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, now calling for the repeal of the renewable fuel standards. Meanwhile several bills floating through Congress aim to slash the cellulosic ethanol mandate.

We’ll have to wait to see, but it could be that the Congressional romance with ethanol will turn out to be a perfect love gone wrong.

Used to be that most of our residential energy bucks went to heating and cooling our homes. In 1978, for example, almost 70 percent of the energy used in American homes went to space heating (66 percent) and cooling (3 percent). Who can forget, of those of us who were old enough to watch, President Jimmy Carter sitting by a fireplace wearing a cardigan sweater urging all Americans to help the country weather the ongoing energy crisis by setting our daytime thermostats to 65 degrees? (Watch video or read a transcript of Carter’s address to the nation. Read more on the “world energy problem” [pdf] from the ’70s.)

But change would soon be a comin’. In the 1980s Congress passed legislation mandating higher energy efficiency. In 1992 the voluntary labeling program known as Energy Star was created, a joint program of the Environmental Protection Agency and eventually the Energy Department (which became a Cabinet-level department during Carter’s watch) that aims “to identify and promote energy-efficient products to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” And lo and behold our home energy consumption began to slowly creep downward — from about 114 million British Thermal Units (BTUs) per household in 1980 to 89.6 million BTUs in 2009 (the most recent year for which we have statistics). Not bad, just about a 20 percent drop.

Source: Energy Information Administration’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Includes occupied primary housing units only.

Of course that per household drop has not translated into as large a drop in total residential energy because there are a lot more U.S. homes now: 113.6 million today compared to just 76.6 million in 1978. Between 1978 and 2009 total residential energy use decreased ever so slightly from 10.58 quadrillion BTUs (quads) to 10.18 quads.

Space Heating Success Story

The star in the story of America’s home-energy belt-tightening has got to be space heating. Many of the details of that hearth-warming tale can be found in the Energy Information Administration’s report [pdf] ”How Americans Are Using Energy in Their Homes Today” by Bill McNary and Chip Berry.

The year after Jimmy Carter in his memorable cardigan addressed the nation about conserving energy, Americans were consuming a total of about 7 quads of energy per year to heat our homes. In 2005 we were using only 4.3 quads, and in 2009, just 4.2 quads. That’s a decrease of almost 40 percent, and, don’t forget, over a period when the total number of households was increasing by about 28 percent.

How did we do that? McNary and Berry point to “federal standards, voluntary programs [such as adjusting thermostats down], and housing envelope improvements such as better insulation and improved windows.” Jimmy Carter may have been ridiculed for his cardigan sweater (see here and here), but that little fireside chat may have actually made a difference.

Appliances: The Other Side of the Coin

But while heating-energy use was plummeting in the United States, another energy sink was growing: the power needed to run our appliances and electronics. In 1978 we used about 1.77 quads of energy to power our appliances and electronics; in 2005 that had climbed to 3.25 quads; and in 2009 it had reached 3.5 quads — an increase of a factor of two in 30 years.

And so U.S. residential energy use is slowly being put on its head. In 1978, heating and cooling consumed about 70 percent of our residential energy while appliances and electronics sipped a paltry 17 percent. Today heating and air conditioning have fallen to just 48 percent while appliances and electronics have grown to 35 percent.

Evidence of a Consumer Nation Doing Its Thing

How could this have happened? It certainly wasn’t because appliances became less efficient. Our Energy Star program is alive and well and pushing efficiency. As an example, a new refrigerator today is about 70 percent more efficient than one from the 1970s.

So what gives? Consumerism, that’s what. Over the decades, we’ve taken to acquiring more and more electricity-consuming stuff in our homes.

Take televisions. In 1978 the average household had one; today American households have on average about two and a half. Microwave ovens? The roughly eight percent of households owning microwaves [pdf] in 1978 has risen to almost 100 percent today. The number of households with a second refrigerator has just about doubled from ~14 percent to ~ 23 percent. And then there are all the DVRs and DVD players and the now ubiquitous PC. In 1978 personal computers were just beginning to trickle into the marketplace but were in nowhere near the kind of high demand they are in today while DVRs and DVD players were not even on the scene yet (VCRs, now outmoded of course, were also popping up in American living rooms in the late ‘70s).

Nowadays most of us have any number of these computers and devices spinning their hard drives day and night. Not to mention all the rechargeable thingies we have lying about.

What’s to Be Done?

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has an idea: another round of energy-efficiency standards. An analysis by the group — which has taken the Obama administration to task for missing “deadline after deadline for completing new or updated standards” for appliances — suggests that new and/or updated standards could have saved the American economy $3.7 billion and counting. For each month these standards go unchanged, the group reports, another $300 million in savings are lost.

It’s hard to argue against upping efficiency standards, but I doubt that by themselves such changes will solve the problem. It’s well established that energy efficiency gains can be frustrated by our thirst to consume more and more. Need an illustration? Well … what about appliances and electronics? Thanks to the Energy Star program, appliances and electronics have become way more efficient and yet total energy consumption from appliances and electronics has skyrocketed for reasons noted above.

Could it be that we also need to figure out a way to live without the latest, must-have electronic gadget – like my friend who’s still using the original iPad? Perhaps we could all channel a little bit of Graham Hill’s modern version of the unaccommodated man (albeit with a lot of cash on hand). Barring that, perhaps we can just find the discipline to turn our stuff off when not in use, you think?

Believe it or not, some people don’t buy the fracking boom story. Some predict bust. Others, more of a petering out. What gives? Let’s begin with a story about a lunch.

Lunch with a Skeptic

In the spring of 2008, I was anticipating a lunch meeting with Matthew Simmons. In the oil and gas industry Simmons was considered something of a legend or a pariah, depending on one’s point of view. Either way, he was an iconoclast.

Having served as an energy advisor to President George W. Bush, Simmons had become increasingly concerned about Saudi Arabia’s ability to keep its oil spigot flowing indefinitely. In his book “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy” (Wiley, 2005) Simmons predicted that, with Saudi Arabian oil past peak production, hard times would fall on a world disproportionately dependent on Saudi oil to power its cars and stabilize prices.

Was he right? A good deal of debate surrounds the answer; some have said he was off his rocker, others have called him prescient (see here and here).

And while his predictions of $200 per barrel of oil by 2010 never came to fruition (prices peaked at about $145 per barrel in 2008 — click on chart below for history of prices), the financial crisis of 2008 might have had something to do with that.

The left axis/red line represents the weekly West Texas Intermediate spot price per barrel, the main benchmark for North American crude. The right axis/blue bars indicate the U.S. weekly average per-gallon retail price for all grades. (Data sources: Weekly Cushing, Oklahoma WTI Spot Price and Weekly U.S. All Grades All Formulations Retail Gasoline Prices)

Talk of Bluster on a Blustery Day

Anyway, back to the lunch. I remember the day as sunny and blustery. Through the windows the trees swayed to and fro and the flowers on the azaleas held on for dear life. Inside, things were popping too; Simmons was full of energy, warm, forthcoming and absolutely sure of himself.

Eventually the conversation turned to shale gas, a topic whose buzz about the coming shale gas revolution had just begun to reach a fevered pitch. A couple of years later many experts (and some non-experts, such as yours truly in posts like this and this) would hail shale gas as a “game changer.”

But Simmons distanced himself from those “experts.” “It’s all hype,” he told me over lunch that blustery day, a sentiment he later conveyed to energy consultant Steve Andrews (co-founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas USA): “I’ve never seen the industry hype something crazier.”

When I asked him about such characterization, Simmons explained it had to do with the long-term productivity of fracked wells. The industry was claiming (and still is, by the way) that a single fracked well “can be in production for 20 to 40 years.” If it’s true, it’s quite a deal — frack a well, then stand back and pump out energy and profits for decades.

But the unconvinced Simmons argued that he’d seen the data from existing fracked wells and they simply did not support a decades-long production curve. He was convinced that the productivity of fracked wells rapidly declined with time — by 70 percent in the first year and another 20 percent in the second year, leaving only 10 percent for all those supposed decades of production.

That lunch-time discussion was memorable and I was saddened to learn a couple of years later that Simmons had died.

Was He Wrong About Fracking?

Was Simmons just plain wrong about fracking and tight oil and shale gas? One could argue he was. Because of shale gas, natural gas prices are as low as they’ve been in more than a decade, coal usage in the United States is down, and tight oil production in the Bakken and Eagle Ford formations is on the rise. Because of tight oil and shale gas, America’s energy prospects have never been brighter. A recent report by the International Energy Agency predicts that the United Sates will become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020 and a net oil exporter by 2030.

Maybe Not

And yet, while the fracking business is booming, there are some naysayers out there who have argued that this particular king has no clothes. (See here, here, here and here.)

Now add J. David Hughes of the Post Carbon Institute to the naysayer list. Seeming to channel Simmons in the Comment section of last week’s edition of the journal Nature, Hughes claims that “the production of shale gas and oil is overhyped.” As Simmons did, he points to the rapid decline in production rates of fracked wells. Having studied the data from 65,000 U.S. shale wells from 30 shale-gas and 21 tight-oil fields, Hughes concludes that

“Wells decline rapidly within a few years. Those in the top five US plays typically pro­duced 80–95% less gas after three years. In my view, the industry practice of … inferring lifetimes of 40 years or more, is too optimistic.”*

Hughes argues that to keep total production up in the face of declining production from existing wells, the industry will need to continue to drill more and more wells in less productive areas — making the whole enterprise less profitable. Either production will halt or energy prices will head upwards.

Hughes closes out his comment with the following not-so-optimistic assessment of the promise of shale oil and gas:

“Governments and industry must recognize that shale gas and oil are not cheap or inex­haustible: 70% of US shale gas comes from fields that are either flat or in decline. And the sustainability of tight-oil production over the longer term is questionable. … Declaring US energy independence and laying plans to export the shale bounty is unwise.”

Could be that despite fracking and its current bounty, we’re not going to be able to drill our way to energy security after all.

__________________________

End Note

*  New data [pdf] by the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows a similar steep drop-off in well productivity.

The environmental community got a shot in the arm following the 2012 election. After it had languished as a non-issue throughout the presidential campaign, Obama gave a shout-out to climate change in his victory speech on election night and two months later it was a focal point of his inaugural address.

The question on many minds following that speech was: would climate change rank high enough as an issue to appear in his State of the Union address? And if so, would its inclusion indicate a strong intent on the part of the president to act quickly? Or would it be a mere mention to placate those worried about the planet’s health, with no assurance that anything substantive would happen?

Last night we seemed to get our answer. Obama devoted almost a tenth of his speech to climate and energy.

Laying Down the Climate Gauntlet

About 18 minutes into the speech, following thunderous approval of the need to invest “in science and innovation” — and making the case specifically for our energy investments — Obama cogently laid out the reasons for acting on climate. (Or see here.)

“For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change.”

He went on to cite the mounting evidence.

“But the fact is the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods — all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science and act before it’s too late.”

He encouraged legislators to do their job.

“I urge this Congress to get together, pursue a bipartisan market-based solution to climate change like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago.”

Then he laid down the gauntlet.

“But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct–I will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take now and in the future to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

But Then … a Backtrack?

On the heels of his climate proclamation, Obama pivoted from the need to pursue clean-energy solutions like wind and solar to his commitment to continuing the pursuit of natural gas, and clearing the hurdles and speeding the development of new sources of oil and gas.

“In the meantime, the natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. We need to encourage that. That’s why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits. That’s got to be part of an all-of-the-above plan.”

And here it was again, the energy theme Obama has come to embrace, his all-of-the-above policy. (See here and here.) In fact this policy was prominently featured earlier in his address too:

“Today no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy.”

And he pointed with pride that:  

“We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years.”

Now, I know that growing natural gas supplies can supplant coal in electricity generation and thereby slow greenhouse gas emissions (provided there is not significant leakage of natural gas — an unresolved question). But natural gas, like oil, is a hydrocarbon and so burning it leads to carbon dioxide emissions, the very emissions we must cut to “combat climate change.”

So the question arises: Does it make sense to work to reduce carbon emissions on the one hand and facilitate new oil and gas production on the other?

Oil and Gas Revenues to Fuel Renewable Energy Technologies

Obama seemed to answer that question in his address by proposing we use “some of our oil and gas revenues to fund an Energy Security Trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.” It’s an intriguing way to get to a carbon-free economy. Just like wasps who lay their eggs inside a host prey so the eggs can hatch and feed off their host before killing it, the Energy Security Trust would siphon dollars from the oil and gas industry until renewables were strong enough to make oil and gas irrelevant.

Can it work? When I tweeted that question last night, Surfrider’s Chad Nelsen responded yes, kind of, with a caveat: “only if the acceleration of renewables (& electricity-based transportation) out paces extraction.” Over at Grist David Roberts pointed out that Obama’s proposal to use oil and gas revenue to fund an Energy Security Trust is essentially a tax and thus unlikely to receive congressional approval.

The bottom line is Obama’s in charge and so we’ll have to see how this plays itself out. But I am a bit uncomfortable. It feels to me as if the president is trying to play good guy with the environmental community and the oil and gas industries at the same time. At the very least I would like to see him explain how he reconciles the objectives of lower emissions and more oil and gas production, and how his all-of-the-above energy strategy will allow us to meet our climate objectives.

In Pursuit of Hydrocarbons

Last year on the campaign stump, Obama presented himself as the “all of the above” guy on energy. Here’s an example from a speech delivered at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland:

“We need an energy strategy for the future — an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”
(President Obama, March 15, 2012)

The operative words are “every source.” Sure, he touts and has funded the development of green energy, but he has also favored a ramp-up in production of domestic hydrocarbons — specifically oil and natural gas. At any number of occasions last year Obama trotted out the fact that under his watch domestic drilling and production were up, imports were down. Similar boasts appear on WhiteHouse.gov as well:

“Domestic oil and natural gas production has increased every year President Obama has been in office. In 2011, American oil production reached the highest level in nearly a decade and natural gas production reached an all-time high.”

The Climate Change Pledge

While energy was a campaign issue, it was obvious (painfully so for many) that climate change was not. No major policy speeches by either candidate and not a single question in the debates.

But after the election climate change re-entered the president’s ambit. First came his acceptance speech on election night:

“We want our children to live in an America … that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”

Then came an inaugural address that got the environmental community all atwitter — climate change receiving more attention than any other single issue? Could it be that Obama was positioning himself to go after climate change in a big way?

You Can’t Have ‘All of the Above’ and Address Climate Change

But here’s the problem: an “all of the above” energy policy that encourages the development and production of oil and gas flies in the face of a “climate change” pledge to “respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”

And the stakes are too high to ignore. Greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric greenhouse gases are at an all-time high. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001. And there is increasing concern that we may be seeing an uptick in extreme weather events as a result of global warming.

Responding to climate change requires that production and use of hydrocarbon fuels be ramped down, not up.

So sooner or later the Obama administration will face a moment of truth — a choice between following an “all of the above” path or responding to “the threat of climate change.” And that moment could be just down the road.

The Looming Keystone XL Decision

The Keystone XL project would put into place a pipeline system that would allow oil imports to flow from the Canadian tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast. (For more, see my post here, this NYT explainer, and this Washington Post Keystone XL interactive graphic.)

It’s been a rallying cry for both the “drill, baby drill” crowd and the environmentally minded, albeit from different positions. For the pro-drillers the pipeline is a no-brainer — a job-creating project that will bring a new, unconventional, (almost) domestic source of oil to American refineries.

For many environmentalists, stopping the pipeline is also a no-brainer — it’s a landscape-decimating proposition whose oil is among the most carbon-intensive out there. (More here, here and here.)

There’s also the issue of the pipeline itself. The initial plan had routed it through highly sensitive lands in Nebraska’s Sand Hills, which sit above the all-important Ogallala aquifer — a critical source of drinking water and irrigation for a huge swath of the United States. The potential risk to the aquifer was so grave that Dave Heineman, the Republican governor of Nebraska, urged Obama to deny TransCanada (the pipeline company) the greenlight for the project.

And finally there is the climate concern. While there is still some debate about how the size of the Alberta resource — and how much carbon dioxide would be released if it were completely exploited (see here and here) — there is little argument that on a BTU-to-BTU basis, tar sands oil is about as dirty and carbon-intensive as it comes. And so sure, if you’re an “all of the above” president, you might approve the pipeline. But if you’re a “respond to climate” one? I don’t think so.

Decision Day Approaches

The Keystone XL project has had its ups and downs, its starts and stops. (See timeline.) Because the pipeline would cross an international border, the project must be reviewed by the State Department and approved by the president. In January 2012, the State Department rejected TransCanada’s application because of concerns about environmental impacts but invited the company to re-apply with a new route that would avoid environmentally sensitive areas.

TransCanada has now submitted a new proposal whose newly proffered path for the pipeline avoids some — but not all — of the ecologically sensitive areas in Nebraska and its surrounds: It still passes over the Ogallala but avoids the Sand Hills.

Gov. Heineman has approved the new plan, with the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality finding that the pipeline’s construction and operation along the new route would result in “minimal environmental impacts” and that any oil released “should be localized and Keystone would be responsible for any cleanup.”

So now it’s up to Obama and his administration.

The State Department is said to be studying the new plan and a decision is expected this spring. So what will they do? Just-confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry was cagey and non-committal on the subject during his confirmation hearings last week, promising only to make “appropriate decisions.” (Hey, at least he didn’t say he would decide for it then against it.)

Ultimately, though, the decision is in the hands of President Obama. That decision will be revealing indeed.

_________________________

End Note

* Oil sands produce bitumen, a thick tarry hydrocarbon that is either “upgraded” into a synthetic blend or diluted so it flows like oil.

Wedges 101

Since the publication in 2004 of the watershed paper by Princeton University’s Steve Pacala and Rob Socolow, the discussion of how to mitigate climate change has been dominated by the concept of wedges.

Before Pacala and Socolow’s paper much of the debate about lowering greenhouse gas emissions to avoid dangerous climate change tended to focus on trying to find a “silver bullet”: a single, optimum technology (e.g., nuclear, renewables, carbon capture and storage, efficiency) that could be deployed to get us from today’s carbon-glutinous energy system to the carbon-free energy system of the future. (See related story: “Climate Scientist Fears His ‘Wedges’ Made It Seem Too Easy“)

Pacala and Socolow argued that we should be using buckshot instead of a bullet; that is, instead of finding any one single low-carbon technology to deploy, we should be taking a more diversified approach. In this approach we can think of any single technology that would lower carbon emissions as an “emissions stabilization wedge,” which, if deployed, could by itself avoid a modest one gigaton of carbon emissions per year. (We currently emit about nine gigatons of carbon per year.) While no single one-gigaton wedge would be adequate to avoid dangerous climate change, a combination of stabilization wedges could be.

Since the 2004 publication of Pacala and Socolow’s seminal wedges paper, the number of wedges needed to reduce business-as-usual emissions to a level that would stabilize the climate has increased. In the original paper it was argued that seven wedges were necessary as in this figure. A new paper argues that we now need 19 to stabilize emissions and another 12 to eliminate emissions. (Figure is from EPA and was reproduced from Pacala and Socolow [2004].)

At the time of their paper, Pacala and Socolow identified 15 possible stabilization wedges that were ready for deployment, and concluded that deploying just seven would be sufficient to stabilize carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at their current rate and would keep CO2 concentrations below 500 parts per million through 2050. Beyond that, continued climate mitigation would require that emissions be radically lowered and approach zero by the end of the century.*

Pacala and Socolow concluded on an optimistic note: “Humanity can solve the carbon and climate problem in the first half of this century simply by scaling up what we already know how to do.” In other words, a combination of seven technologies already in existence would start us on the right path.

Wedges Revisited … and Again

In a 2011 article published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Socolow revisited the wedge strategy and reaffirmed that with one change, the strategy was still viable — our inaction since 2004 meant that now nine wedges (instead of seven) would be needed to stabilize emissions. (See my previous post.)

Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, Steve Davis of the University of California at Irvine and co-authors take a fresh look at the wedges notion from the perspective of 2012 and find that even nine will not be adequate. In introducing their study, the authors note that while Pacala and Socolow’s premise was that stabilizing emissions at 2004 levels would be sufficient to meet the target of 500 parts per million, emissions have increased over the past seven years from about seven gigatons a year to about nine gigatons a year. What that means is that it is no longer a matter of stabilizing emissions, but of lowering them to meet the target of 500 parts per million.

Moreover, Davis et al point out, Pacala and Socolow punted on the real challenge of avoiding dangerous climate change: not just stabilizing emissions but taking them to zero. And not just doing that, but doing it in a world with increasing demands for energy — energy that in a business-as-usual scenario would be mostly generated by fossil fuels.

Again, More Wedges Needed

Taking that growth in energy demand into account, the authors estimate that we will need not just seven or nine but 31 stabilization wedges. Fortunately, about 12 of those should come more or less free of charge: it is estimated that increases in carbon efficiency as the developing world industrializes should shave off about 12 gigatons of global carbon emissions per year. An additional nine wedges will be needed to stabilize emissions at today’s level of nine gigatons of carbon per year and another 10 wedges to take us down to zero emissions.

While Pacala and Socolow called the solution to the climate problem a “heroic challenge,” they still thought it was possible because we had the basic technological know-how. Davis et al are far less sanguine. While not suggesting that we throw in the towel, they argue that major new innovations and technological advances will be needed and needed in short order:

“The emission reductions required by current targets, let alone a complete phase-out of emissions, demand fundamental, disruptive changes in the global energy system over the next
50 years. Depending on what sort of fossil-fuel infrastructure is replaced and neglecting
any emissions produced to build and maintain the new infrastructure (see, e.g. [43]), a
single wedge represents 0.7–1.4 terawatts (TW) of carbon-free energy (or an equivalent
decrease in demand for fossil energy)… few would dispute that extensive innovation of
technologies will be necessary to afford many terawatts of carbon-free energy and
reductions in energy demand.”

Sounds daunting but consider what the world was like 50 years ago in 1963. A lot has happened since — it could happen again, this time to energy.

End Notes

* A note about CO2 and climate stabilization: Pacala and Socolow’s 2004 paper limited the rise in CO2 to 500 parts per million to avoid dangerous climate change. More recently the international community (for example the Copenhagen Accord) adopted a target of 450 parts per million. However, some believe this is still too high and that the target should be closer to 350 parts per million. Others opine that we may have waited too long to meet either a 350 or 450 parts per million target.

A note about other greenhouse gases: If the scenario laid out by Davis et al isn’t daunting enough, consider that fact that there are other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere besides CO2 (e.g., methane, nitrous oxide, and HFCs). Factoring their contributions into the climate equation is equivalent to having an atmospheric CO2 concentration of about 450 parts per million — the threshold that many believe will lead to dangerous climate change. The saving factor — at least for now — is that atmospheric particulate matter from air pollution cools the planet enough to more or less cancel out the warming from the non-CO2 greenhouse gases. And so you can sort of think of air pollution as a pseudo-stabilizing wedge. But air pollution is a bad thing that kills people. It’s something we want to get rid of. But getting rid of air pollution means losing that pseudo wedge. And that is what’s known as being caught between a wedge and a hard place.