To hit the gas or not?: Natural gas and our energy future

Debate over whether to promote natural gas or not has been elevated across the country following President Obama’s State of the Union address where he made a strong call for natural gas development. Just yesterday, one of the nation’s largest and oldest environmental organizations, the Sierra Club, announced that it will no longer support natural gas. Below is a post from systems modeler and Climate Interactive partner, Tom Fiddaman, about some of the dynamics at play when considering gas as a transition fuel to low-carbon energy sources.

Gas – a bridge to nowhere?

Tom Fiddaman, February 3, 2012

C-ROADS Update Available – Download version 3.0 today!

Every new release of C-ROADS marks an exciting milestone for the small team here at Climate Interactive that began creating this model three years ago and continue to advance it in a world where the need for better understanding of the dynamics of climate and policy is greater than ever. From Copenhagen to Washington, and most recently, to Durban, C-ROADS has added scientifically-vetted analysis to the conversation and efforts to address climate change.

To build on the successes and address feedback from users, version 3.0 of C-ROADS adds many new features to this already robust simulator. We hope that these additional features and updates improve the effectiveness of your climate change efforts.

With the new version of C-ROADS you can…

• Test the sensitivity of the model results to different parameters under the Sensitivity Tab
• Analyze policies with new types of emissions targets such as emissions per capita
• Adjust GDP and population assumptions
• Examine six new graphs for outputs such as GDP and population
• Facilitate the World Climate role-playing exercise using the new control panel

Please download the new version of C-ROADS by logging into Climate Interactive or requesting access by filling out our download request form. A video tutorial and version release notes are also available on our website to guide you through the new features.

For an online demonstration of C-ROADS and the new features please join us on February 14, 2012 at 15:00 GMT (10:00 EST). Please RSVP to reserve your spot at this web event at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/728788440.

Can a Graph Be a Call to Action?

A new article,  2011 Climate Change in Pictures and Data: Just the Facts, shares, in just two pages, seven of the most important graphs on the planet. The datasets are striking, and  author Peter Gleick draws clear conclusions in a very tightly worded piece:

• ” CO₂ in the atmosphere continues its inexorable rise.
• Higher concentrations of greenhouse gases leads to a hotter planet
• A hotter planet means an intensification of the hydrological cycle
• A hotter planet means disappearing glaciers and ice, especially in the Arctic.
• A warming planet also means more extremes of climate.”

I wish policy-makers, business leaders, and citizens around the world had these conclusions, and the datasets behind them, more deeply in mind. Most of the time, these trends aren’t in the headlines, though. They are crowded out by emergencies that feel more immediate, or by stories that feel more entertaining. Our planetary life-support system is changing quickly, but our collective awareness of that fact is slow to catch up with reality.

Is there anything to be done about that?

Cheap Natural Gas Has the Potential to Weaken a Critical Feedback Loop Needed for the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy

Early adoption of renewable energy helps jump start the transition to a low-carbon economy via a reinforcing feedback loop. Anything that diminishes early adoption of renewable energy – including competition from ultra-cheap fossil fuels -  slows down this  transition.

Recent reports that unusually low natural gas prices in the US may be weakening homeowner’s enthusiasm for investing in solar panels are  a cause for concern, especially considering a dynamic we have begun exploring with En-ROADS (our interactive scenario-testing tool that explores the dynamics of creating a low-carbon economy). In En-ROADS, just as described in the latest news accounts, when there is a lot of cheap gas around the growth in renewables tends to be slower.

On the surface, these reports seem to be telling the tale of a one-time event: cheaper gas this year means fewer new solar installations this year. That’s true, but it’s not the whole story.

Consider the  virtuous cycle shown in the diagram above: with more units of solar  installed there is more learning by doing. Costs  of solar fall, leading to greater attractiveness of solar and even more units of solar installed, and so on.

But here’s the glitch – if the falling cost of natural gas makes  the attractiveness of solar decline, then the early installations that launch the virtuous cycle falter, and the whole reinforcing process can lose momentum.

The impact of cheap gas is NOT  just a smaller number of new installations this year; it’s a future loss in the speed at which solar becomes more affordable. Think of money not invested in a retirement account; it’s not just that the balance is lower, but that a lower balance earns interest more slowly.

What we do and why are we doing it: a radio interview with Climate Interactive

What is it that keeps an organization like Climate Interactive ticking? Co-directors Drew Jones and Beth Sawin, along with team member and MIT professor, John Sterman, joined Radio Green Talk host Diana Dehm to discuss this and elaborate on why we provide the tools that we do.

Check out the interview here.

During the program John discusses how we use role playing to help people viscerally experience some of the dynamics at the climate change negotiations in the World Climate Exercise. As Drew put it,

Transparent, Real-Time Analysis Works

Climate Interactive is a small team with big goals.

One of our founding goals was to offer rapid turnaround analysis of the most important climate and energy issues, and to make that analysis available ‘open source’. In doing so, we reasoned, we’d be boosting the effectiveness of the many, many parties –- from negotiators to civil society leaders — who are calling for climate policy ambitious enough to be consistent with the latest science. And, if such groups found our analysis helpful and clarifying, we assumed they would share it with their networks and constituencies, reaching more people than our small team ever would on its own.

Over the years, from Copenhagen to Cancun, this has been a productive formula for us, and it paid off again in Durban, where we analyzed the impact of waiting until 2020 to increase the ambition of pledges.

• The Washington Post covered our analysis on Dec 6th: U.N. climate talks move slowly as new studies urge more dramatic emissions cuts;
• Out of dozens of side events offered that day, the analyses from our team was included in the ECO – the Climate Action Network handout, widely read across the COP;
• In a youth briefing Jonathan Pershing was asked: “The current commitments that are on the table put us on a trajectory to around 4.3°C according to analysis by Climate Interactive.  Are you suggesting that the commitments that have been put on the table are good enough and we should now look at 2020 and beyond?”;
• Civil society groups 350.org and Avaaz organized a global online petition drive that got 700,000 signatures in 48 hours. The petition said: “The world cannot afford delay on climate action. I urge you to abandon your proposal to postpone a binding global agreement until 2020, and stand with vulnerable countries around the world by stepping up your ambition and accelerating your timeline for bold climate action.”;
• The “Climate Progress” blog of Joe Romm reposted our findings; and
• Our analysis was shared within the TckTckTck network (a global alliance of more than 300 civil society groups). It also was included in a joint press release from Greenpeace and WWF.

While celebrating our role in these remarkable events, we also soberly acknowledge that, in the end, Durban did not increase the ambition of 2020 pledges to be in line with a feasible 2°C pathway. Our efforts helped the world to see, without any illusion, what was being decided, but we didn’t get a better deal.

So, we’ll be keeping at it, in 2012 and beyond.  We’ll be ‘adding up’ current pledges, and we’ll be offering analysis of the ‘how-to’ of the  transition to a low carbon economy, which is, after all, the fundamental re-orientation needed to deliver a liveable climate. As long as there are leaders out there calling for policy that matches the science, we’ll be doing what we can to offer analysis that helps them make their case.

Durban Talks Open the Door to a Future Global Legal Agreement, But Produce No Immediate Strengthening of Pledges

With the close of COP-17, parties to the UNFCCC maintained the same inadequate emissions reduction pledges, thus committing the world to a more costly and risky path forward than is needed given the immediate availability of cost-effective measures to reduce emissions and begin the transition to a low-carbon economy.

As our previous analysis showed, postponing the adoption of more ambitious targets until after 2020 would commit countries to rates of CO₂ emissions reductions after 2020 far larger than what has been seen either historically or in energy system model projections.  By failing to agree to a mechanism to increase the ambition of mitigation targets before 2020, the decisions made at COP-17 place unnecessary burdens  on future generations who will have to work much harder and endure  much greater costs and risks as a result of these decisions.

Without new pledges for emissions reduction on the table, our Climate Scoreboard analysis projects future global temperature increases far above the global goal of 2°C (3.6 °F) , pointing towards temperature increase of 4.3°C (2.6 – 6.9°C) or 7.7°F (4.6 – 12.3°F) by the end of the century.

Even though countries were unable to agree to increase the ambition of 2020 pledges, many cost effective mitigation opportunities exist today; and the costs will fall as low-carbon, efficient technologies develop and scale. Commitments lacking the necessary ambition delay these cost reductions and the maturation of the technologies needed to make a sustainable, low-carbon economy a reality.

To Avoid Expensive and Disruptive Rates of Emissions Reduction In Coming Decades Parties Must Increase the Ambition of 2020 Pledges Today

To see a reposting on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress blog, click here. And a corroborating report by ClimateWorks Foundation here plus another by Climate Analytics here.

Postponing commitment to ambitious targets until after 2020 would commit countries to rates of CO2 emissions reductions in decades beyond 2020 that exceed those typically seen in the current generation of energy system models, making future efforts to limit temperature increase to 2°C more expensive and disruptive than needed. Without deeper reductions than are currently pledged by 2020, future generations will have sustain very rapid rates of reduction in emissions.

In the press and in the halls of the climate negotiations some parties, including the US, have been saying that 2020 pledges are essentially fixed in the form of the voluntary commitments made under the Cancun Agreement, and that current political and economic pressures mean that the time for more ambitious commitments to emissions reductions can come only after 2020.

There Doesn’t Have to be an Emissions Gap

Following on last year’s Emissions Gap report which was influential in the Cancun COP-16 climate negotiations, Climate Interactive Co-Director, Beth Sawin,  again this  year contributed to a UNEP/European Climate Foundation assessment, Bridging the Emissions Gap, which was released in advance of COP-17.

As with last year’s report, the Bridging the Gap Report looks across various studies of the emissions reduction pledges within the UNFCCC  and finds that a significant gap still exists between expected emissions under the pledges and emissions consistent with a likely chance of limiting temperature increase to 2°C. The report include CI’s Climate Scoreboard as one of the 10 modeling studies assessing the pledges.

Even in the most optimistic scenarios examined in the report, the gap between expected emissions under the pledges and the 2020 emissions consistent with limiting temperature increase to 2°C was 6 Gtons CO2e. Under less optimistic scenarios the gap could be as large as 11 Gtons CO2e.

The new report goes beyond quantifying  the Emissions  Gap to also look across studies of technologically feasible options for reducing emissions and finds a package of measures, from increasing the rate of improvement in energy efficiency to scaling up low carbon fuel supplies, for reducing the 2020 Emissions Gap to zero.

Just as Climate Interactive is finding with our new En-ROADS model of the transition to a low carbon economy, Bridging the Emissions Gap shows that while the world is currently facing a serious gap between the pledges of nations and the level of emissions reductions that are needed, the gap is actually one of determination and political will, not one of physical or technological constraint.

Climate Interactive in Durban at COP17

Travis Franck, Senior Scientist and Policy Analyst

Climate Interactive is attending the UNFCCC’s seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP17). Travis Franck will be meeting with negotiators and partners (old and new) for the first week of the conference. On Thursday, 1 Dec 2011, Travis will hold a side event at the Bellona Foundation side event room. Details:

Title:
Using Interactive Computer Simulations for Energy and Climate Policy Results: C-ROADS and En-ROADS

Description:
Travis Franck will share stories of how analysts and advocates can use interactive tools towards better climate results. Attendees will leave the session with knowledge of a library of interactive climate and energy tools, widgets, role playing exercises, and simulations. Dr. Franck will share Climate Interactive’s insight into how simulations improve stakeholder understanding and decision-making.

Time/Date: 3pm on Thursday, 1 Dec 2011

Location
The Bellona Delegation Room is located on the Lower Level within the main building of ICC, Room 14. The room is near the EU pavilion and the next to the US Delegation Room.

Attendance is free, but seating is limited so come early.

Travis looks forward to meeting as many of the Climate Interactive community as possible. If you’re in Durban, please email him (tfranck at climateinteractive.org) to setup a meeting.