IPCC Reports & Advancements: Energy Tech Challenges & Solutions, Assignments of Material Science and Technology

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Prof. Chris Green,

Department of Economics

McGill University

an inconvenient truth

2

nd

Midori Hyndman,

Communication Consultant

climate

change

• If in 2100, all of the world’s people live like the people in developed countries do today, but without the introduction of new carbon emission-free energy technologies, atmospheric levels of CO2 will seriously impact global and regional climates, raise sea levels, and do widespread economic and ecological damage.
• Al Gore’s film “an inconvenient truth” was successful in demonstrating the gravity of the threat to climate if we continue to rely on carbon emitting energy technologies.
• But, the film ignores another “inconvenient truth”.

Source: Image from Reuters, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/news_galleries/climate/clim ate.xml

an inconvenient truth

Dramatically increase

energy efficiency

Supply huge amounts of

zero CO2 emitting energy

The need for new energy technologies is far greater than is currently assumed or admitted

nd

• Required energy efficiency improvements mean pushing energy efficiency as close to its physical limits as economic costs will allow
• Existing carbon-emission energy technologies need to be made scalable and cost competitive
• New, scalable, technologies need to be researched and developed to the point where they are not too costly
• Incentives need to be provided to deploy scalable technologies once they are ready (“on the shelf”)

Required technologies are available,

or awaiting “commercialization”

Barriers are “socio-economic” and

institutional, not technological

“Drastic technological breakthroughs”

are not necessary

Third and Fourth Assessment Reports IPCC Working Group III

UN Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change

• UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) has systematically understated the magnitude of the energy technology challenge.
• Current climate policy does not reflect the challenge we face.

frozen technology 1990

reference scenario target level

IPCC

GtCO

2

B2 scenario Working Group III (2007)

• Various scenarios are used to suggest possible future emissions paths in the absence of policies to mitigate emissions. These are called baseline or reference scenarios.
• The stabilization challenge is typically viewed as reducing emissions from a reference scenario pathway to a target level or stabilization pathway.
• But, this approach understates the technology challenge and the likely cost of achieving stabilization by overlooking what is built into the reference scenarios.
• The technology challenge is better measured from a baseline indicating what emissions would be in the future using the same technologies that are used today. This is called a “frozen technology” baseline.
• If technologies were in fact “frozen” (in fact they won’t be because technologies are slowly but continually changing), global emissions would grow at roughly the same rate as the global economy.

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frozen technology 1990

reference scenario target level

IPCC

GtCO

2

B2 scenario Working Group III (2007)

• In the figure, the green area or “gap” indicates the amount by which emissions in the reference scenario exceed, at any given time, the targeted or stabilization emission pathway.
• Policies have tended to focus on the green “gap”.
• The blue area or “gap” indicates the amount of carbon emission-free energy and energy efficiency improvement that is built into the reference scenario , and is expected to occur in the absence of policy.
• The green and blue “gaps” combine to indicate the total technology challenge of getting emissions down to the target level.
• It is important to note that the size of the total “gap” depends on the scenario chosen. The B 2 scenario is characterized by a modest global average annual rate of economic growth of 2.2% over the 21st^ century. Most scenarios use higher rates of global economic growth.

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current policy focus

GtCO

2

Breakdown of IPCC B2 scenario

technology challenge

frozen technology 1990

sectoral shift

• This slide, and the next three, allow us to break down the stabilization challenge into energy technology components
• Note that the technology challenge is represented by the light blue and green areas. The dark blue reflects a likely decline in energy intensity attributable to reductions in the share of total energy used relatively by energy intensive industries and activities (sectoral shift).
• In the B2 scenario, the magnitude of the technology challenge in 2100 is indicated by the bracket.

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GtCO

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energy intensity decline

frozen technology 1990 sectoralshift

carbon free energy

energy efficiency improvement

Breakdown of IPCC B2 scenario

current policy focus

• We can break down the blue area (gap) into components. The two main components are (i) energy intensity decline, the reduction in energy per unit of output, and (ii) carbon emission-free energy.
• Over time, and on a global scale, approximately 80% of energy intensity decline is comprised of energy efficiency improvement. The rest is attributable to long term sectoral shifts that are likely to move in the direction of less energy intensive activities
• The improvements in energy efficiency will not be easy to achieve, requiring important advances, and in some cases breakthroughs, in energy technology.
• The energy efficiency improvements built into the B2 scenario are close to estimates of what is phsically achievable.
• For the B2 reference scenario, the dark and medium blue areas are approximately 80% of the overall blue (all shades) region. The light blue remainder is carbon free energy built into the B2 scenario.

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frozen technology 1990

energy efficiency improvement

~26 TW

~43 TW

carbon free energy

Breakdown of IPCC B2 scenario

current policy focus

• It is useful to translate, if possible, emission reductions into energy or power terms.
• A (large) measure of power is a terawatt (TW) which is equal to a trillion watts generated at a point in time. (A TW=10^12 w.) A TW is equal to 31.56 exajoules per year (EJ/yr). (An EJ is 10^18 joules).
• Note that the estimates of TW are in thermal (as opposed to electric) terms, reflecting the amount of primary energy to produce a TW of power or its equivalent in energy terms
• For the B2 scenario, the TW estimates give a rough idea of the magnitude of the stabilization challenge in power (or energy) terms. The challenge is huge when compared to current consumption of power and the amounts that carbon-free.

Carbon emission-free power

required in the future

25 - 40 TW

Current world power consumption ~16 TW

• In general, at least

of which only ~2.5 TW is carbon emission-free

• B2 scenario requires^ ~^26 TW

1 TW is equivalent to …

• This is over and above the contribution from energy efficiency improvement. The number of TWs is in “thermal” terms. The difference between TW thermal and TW electric (TWe) is taken up below.
• In general, the number of TW of carbon-free power needed will depend on (i) economic growth, (ii) the achievable reductions in energy intensity, and (iii) the share of electric power in total energy consumption.

for carbon sequestration

2 000 sleipner fields

• The Sleipner field in the North Sea is perhaps the best known site for the sequestration of carbon dioxide from an energy-related operation.
• Each year about 1 million tonnes of CO2 associated with Norway’s natural gas production is stored below the North Sea in a saline aquifer.
• To give an idea of what this means, an average size coal fired electricity plant ( MWe) produces about 2.8 million tonnes of CO2 a year (in the absence of utilizing carbon capture technology), or almost three times the amount stored each year in Sliepner.

Source: Image from Statoil Hydro http://www.npd.no/engelsk/cwi/pbl/field_jpgs/43478_Sleipner_Ost.jpg

As a rule of thumb

Electricity Generation:

TWs measured in electric terms

1 TWe is equivalent to …

3 TW thermal = 1 TWe.

• In what follows, specific technologies may be measured in either TW thermal or, if they are used for generating electricity, usually in TW electric (TWe). The measures for nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar are in TWe terms. The others are in thermal terms.
• For example, for a coal plant the primary energy input is used for analysis (measured in TW thermal), whereas, for hydro the electric output is used for analysis (measured in TWe).
• A standard conversion is that 3 TW of primary energy used to produce electricity through a thermal process is equal to 1 TW electric.
• The difference is associated with conversion efficiency. These vary with the power source (coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear), but all conversion efficiencies are much less than 100%, implying ratios of thermal to electric substantially higher than 1:1.

current hydro-electric

capacity

Almost tripling

• New sites may only allow a doubling of capacity.
• Given limited additional sites, a rise in the capacity factor (% of capacity used on average to generate electricity) from 50% to 75% would produce, in electricity generated terms, the equivalent of a tripling of current hydro-electricity generated.
• A rise in the capacity factor could be achieved by some form of time-of-day or real- time pricing.

1 500 000, 2.5 MWe

wind turbines

covering virtually

two-thirds of

Alberta

& massive storage

• 1 500 000, 2.5MWe wind turbines would require approximately 450 000 square kilometers.
• The wind turbines/farms would have to be located in windy areas, with DC grids built to deliver the power over large distances from windy to populated areas.
• For utilities to use most of this power, it would be necessary to have a means of storing excess power when the wind is blowing for use when it is not.