Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
energy, principally future oil imports from Canada, Latin America, and the Middle
East, as well as future ethanol imports from Brazilian sugarcane plantations. Similarly,
we focused on terrestrial impacts for this analysis, ignoring potential freshwater or
marine impacts by hydropower, wind, oil, and natural gas development in US waters.
Finally, we are calculating direct land-use (how much land will we need to produce
energy?), and did not attempt to estimate secondary changes in the land market in
response to the direct land-use.
Scenarios
Our analysis is based on the EIA's 2008 scenarios of energy markets and the economy
[12]. These scenarios were calculated by EIA's National Energy Modeling System, a
comprehensive econometric model of US energy production, imports, and consump-
tion. The scenarios supply information on the amount of additional energy consumed
in 2030 in a particular sector (e.g., million barrels per day of petroleum, billion KW
hr of new generation capacity by solar power). We use four scenarios in our analysis.
A Reference Scenario describes what will likely happen in US energy markets under
laws in force as of April, 2008. The Core Cap-and-Trade Scenario forecasts the effect
of the full Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191), which regulates emis-
sions of greenhouse gases through a cap-and-trade system and provides economic
incentives for increased energy efficiency [24]. One variant of S. 2191 is considered,
the Few Options Scenario, where the use of international offsets in greenhouse gas
emissions is either not economically feasible or is severely limited by regulation and
where there is no increase in nuclear, coal with CCS, and imports of liquefied natural
gas over current levels (the EIA called this the “Limited Alternatives/No International
Offsets case”). Finally, the CCS Scenario forecasts the effect of the Low Carbon Econ-
omy Act (S. 1766), which also sets up a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases
but offers strong incentives for the development and deployment of CCS [25]. Overall
energy consumption by each sector for each scenario is shown in Figure 1A.
Four things about the scenarios are worth noting. First, other scenarios of the likely
effect of S. 2191 [11, 24] are available from other groups, although they are broadly
similar to the EIA analysis. Second, all scenarios of the effect of a Cap-and-Trade bill
are tentative due to uncertainty about the pace of technological change, among other
things. Thus, the EIA scenarios we use in this analysis must be taken as indicative of
future trends, but not defi nitive [24]. Third, the EIA scenarios model the likely response
of the US energy sector in response to a set of policy assumptions, and do not consider
land-use per se. The EIA scenarios predict the most likely response, and do not attempt
to fi nd a more expensive energy mix that would minimize the total land-use. Finally,
US energy policy has changed rapidly since the EIA's 2008 analysis, which still is the
most current available full analysis of a cap-and-trade bill. The Warner-Lieberman bill
is no longer considered an active bill, and most activity in Congress has focused on
the Waxman-Markey bill (H.R. 2454), which proposes a very similar Cap-and-Trade
system. Additionally, the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill
of 2009 (i.e., the stimulus bill) has provided signifi cant support to renewable energy
producers, particularly wind producers. Thus, the Reference Case discussed in this
manuscript may underestimate the amount of renewable energy production in that case.
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