Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
feel the patriotic urge to cheer domestic energy production, regardless of its source and in spite of
evidence of declining returns on investment. Perhaps both understand that declining energy returns
imply really bad news for the economy, regardless of which party is in power. In any case, mum's
the word.
Some facts seem to fit one narrative or the other but, when combined, point to a reality that un-
dermines both narratives.
What if climate change is an even worse problem than most of us assume,
and there is no realistic way to deal seriously with it and still have economic growth?
In the real world of US politics, many Democrats would agree with the first part of the sentence,
many Republicans with the second. Yet both parties would flee from endorsing the statement as a
whole. Nevertheless, this seems to be where the data are driving us. Actual climate impacts have
consistently outpaced the worst-case forecasts issued by the UN's International Panel on Climate
gent than almost anyone previously thought. The math has changed. At this point, the rate of reduc-
tion in fossil fuel consumption required in order to avert catastrophic climate change may be higher,
possibly much higher, than the realistically possible rate of replacement with energy from alternat-
ive sources. Climatologist Kevin Anderson of the UK-based Tyndall Centre figures that industrial
nations need to cut carbon emissions by up to ten percent per year to avert catastrophe, and that
The problem of transitioning quickly away from fossil fuels while maintaining economic
growth is exacerbated by the unique characteristics of different energy sources.
Here's just one example of the difficulty of replacing oil while maintaining economic growth.
Oil is the perfect transport fuel: it stores a lot of energy per unit of weight and volume. Electric bat-
teries can't match its performance. Plug-in electric vehicles exist, of course (though less than one
percent of new vehicles sold in the United States in 2013 were plug-in electrics
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), but batteries
cannot propel airliners or long-haul, eighteen-wheel truck rigs. Yet the trucking and airline indus-
tries just happen to be significant components of our economy; can we abandon or significantly
downsize them and grow the economy as we do so?
What about non-transport replacements for fossil fuels? Well, both nuclear power stations and
renewable energy systems have high up-front investment costs. If you factor in
all
the financial and
energy costs (something the solar, wind, and nuclear industries are reluctant to do), their payback
time is often measured in decades. Thus there seems to be no realistic way to bootstrap the energy
transition (for example, by using the power from solar panels to build more solar panels) while con-
tinuing to provide enough energy to keep the rest of the economy expanding. In effect, to maintain
growth, the energy transition would have to be subsidized by fossil fuels—which would largely de-
feat the purpose of the exercise.
Business-friendly politicians seem to intuitively get much of this, and this knowledge helps fuel
their continued infatuation with oil, coal, and natural gas—despite the increasing
economic
prob-
lems (even if we disregard the environmental problems) with these fuels. But these folks' way of
dealing with this conundrum is simply to deny that climate change is a real issue. That strategy may
work for their supporters in the fossil fuel industries, but it does nothing to avert the worsening
real-world crises of extreme temperature events, droughts, floods, and storms—and their knock-on
impacts on agriculture, economies, and governments.
So those on the political left may be correct in saying that climate change is the equivalent
of a civilization-killing asteroid, while those on the political right may be correct in thinking that
