Summary: A key piece of the doomsters’ climate change destroys the world story is that fossil fuel use continues to increase — especially coal, which becomes the world’s top fuel in the second half of the 21st Century (as it was in the late 19thC). Here Stratfor adds to the evidence that this is not going to happen.
Opening of “When Renewables Replace Fossil Fuels”
By Ian Morris at Stratfor, 24 March 2017.
Since 1750, mankind has pumped some 150 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Almost half that amount has been emitted since 2000, 9.9 billion tons of it in 2016 alone. U.S. President Donald Trump claims to think that links between carbon emissions and climate change are “a hoax,” but if so, the hoax has taken in almost every scientist in the world. By burning fossil fuels, they believe, we have altered the chemistry of the air and the oceans. Last year was the first on record in which the atmosphere’s carbon content never dropped below 400 parts per million, a level not seen for 800,000 years. The climate is warming and becoming more volatile, the ice caps are melting, and mass extinctions are underway. Another species of plant or animal disappears forever every 20 minutes or so {Editor’s note: that’s 26 thousand per year, which is not remotely correct}.
Although this is shocking, it is hardly news, and strategic forecasters have been arguing for years over what its geopolitical consequences will be. But now it seems that some answers to this question are beginning to emerge.
Not If, but When.
Most analysts think that the world’s demand for energy will keep growing in the near future. But they also believe that as time passes, renewable sources of energy — hydroelectric, biomass and perhaps nuclear energy, but above all wind and solar — will replace fossil fuels, reducing carbon emissions. The main disagreements are over how quickly that will happen.
Most experts have concluded that change will come slowly. Analysts at Shell predict it will take a quarter of a century to reach a tipping point where the annual output of renewable energy matches the overall growth in demand, and the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere levels off. Their peers at BP think 30 years will pass before then; those at Exxon say 75. The International Energy Agency (IEA) largely agrees, though it recently cut its estimate from 60 years to 35.
When compared with actual data, however, forecasters’ records have consistently erred on the side of conservatism. Shell and BP base their estimates out to 2040 on the assumption that total energy demand will grow by 1.4% each year, even though the recent rate has been more like 1.0%. They, Exxon and the IEA assume that solar and wind energy supplies will grow between 5% and 9.5% each year, even though the recent rate has been above 15%, and that other non-fossil-fuel sources (nuclear, hydroelectric and biomass power) will expand between 1.4% and 1.9% annually, despite their recent performance of around 2.3%. All conclude that the demand for fossil fuels will continue growing through the 2020s and 2030s at 0.7-1.2% per year, though the recent trend has been 0.5%.
The IEA, at least, has been ready to admit its mistakes, even if it has been slow to correct them. Back in 2002, it predicted that in 2015 wind and solar sources would produce about 40 and 10 gigawatts (1 GW is equivalent to 1 billion watts) respectively in 2015. In 2005, it revised its estimates to 170 and 20 GW, hiking them up again in 2010 to 340 and 75. But the actual outputs were 430 GW of wind power and 240 GW of solar power. By that point, wind and solar energy accounted for one-third of the total global increase in energy demand.
Experts argue over why one another’s guesses have been so wrong (and so consistently wrong in the same direction), but their mistakes remind us of an obvious point: No one knows what will happen. The best we can do is to make our assumptions explicit, map out their consequences and ask whether they are plausible. In this spirit, Kingsmill Bond, a new energy strategist for the investment research company TS Lombard, recently published the following chart showing when the tipping point described above will arrive under different assumptions about growth in demand and solar and wind power.
Which columns and rows we select depends on our guesses about future policies and attitudes, engineers’ abilities to solve daunting technical problems, enthusiasm for investment in infrastructure and, of course, the performance of the global economy. But despite this heaping up of “ifs,” “buts” and “maybes,” neither the top and bottom rows nor the left- and right-hand columns seem very likely.
That leaves us in the middle of the grid, with a tipping point coming in the 2020s or 2030s. Bond himself leans earlier rather than later, expecting wind and solar energy to grow at 20% and overall demand at 1%, in large part because of gains in efficiency. If he’s right, the lines will cross in 2020, and by the early 2040s half of the world’s energy will come from renewables. If so, then Rabah Arezki, the head of commodities at the International Monetary Fund, must also be right when he says we stand “at the onset of the biggest disruption in oil markets ever.” …
“Imagining a World After Fossil Fuels”
is republished with permission of Stratfor.
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The good news is that the nightmares are probably wrong
The IPCC’s AR5 report gave four scenarios for the future, defined by the forcings generated by anthropogenic effects (in watts per square meter of the Earth’s surface), identified by the forcing as of 2100 — ranging an optimistic 2.6 to a worst case 8.5. The excellent the RCP Database shows the annual CO2 emissions from each during the 21st century.
For years we have been bombarded by studies and media articles about the latter, describing its nightmarish results. — many misleadingly calling it a “business as usual” scenario.
The astonishing progress of renewables — solar is now cheaper than grid electricity in favorable regions — gives high odds that CO2 emissions will follow one of the slower paths. Advances in other sources, such as advanced nukes and fusion (Tri Alpha Fusion has attracted hundreds of millions in private funding), suggest that by the middle of the 21st century CO2 emissions might begin falling (as in the RCP2.6 scenario).
About the author
Ian Morris is a historian and archaeologist. He received his doctorate from Cambridge University. He is currently a Professor of Classics at Stanford, has published twelve books, and has directed excavations in Greece and Italy.
Dr. Morris’ bestsellers include Why the West Rules – for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
About Stratfor
Founded in 1996, Stratfor provides strategic analysis and forecasting to individuals and organizations around the world. By placing global events in a geopolitical framework, we help customers anticipate opportunities and better understand international developments. They believe that transformative world events are not random and are, indeed, predictable. See their About Page for more information.
For More Information
More good news: “IEA finds CO2 emissions flat for third straight year even as global economy grew in 2016” — press release from the IEA, 17 March 2017.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information about this vital issue see the keys to understanding climate change and these posts about the politics of climate change…
- How we broke the climate change debates. Lessons learned for the future.
- Is our certain fate a coal-burning climate apocalypse? No!
- Manufacturing climate nightmares: misusing science to create horrific predictions.
- Good news! Coal bankruptcies point to a better future for our climate.
- Britain joins the shift from coal, taking us away from the climate nightmare.
- Good news from China about climate change!
- Good news for the New Year! Salon explains that the global climate emergency is over.
To learn more about the state of climate change…
… see The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change
“In recent years the media, politicians, and activists have popularized the notion that climate change has made disasters worse. But what does the science actually say? Roger Pielke, Jr. takes a close look at the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the underlying scientific research, and the data to give you the latest science on disasters and climate change. What he finds may surprise you and raise questions about the role of science in political debates.”
