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Question: So are you glad the semester is over?
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Much of the course has looked back over the energy transitions. Let's spend a short lesson looking forward. Every year the department of energy (the energy information agency portion) releases the Annual Energy Outlook. These reports contain the latest energy statistics and projections. Take a look at this years Annual Energy Outlook Report [1] (read pages 5 to 10 to get an overview of the changes and emerging issues in Energy and Environment). Also of note is the BP report the BP Statistical Review of World Energy [2] See the one page overview on "2019 in a glance" (the 2020 report will be out in late 2021 with the Covid-19 impacts).
Related to the image of the world at night is the point sources of carbon dioxide emissions. Note that the locations are mostly in the developed nations with a strong presence from China and India.
The bulk of our energy-related pollution comes from electricity generation and transportation. For example look at the U.S. data.
Overall, we still expect to see carbon dioxide levels decreasing for the US in the short term. Hot summers (lots of air condensation), cold winters, and world economic productivity will influence emissions. Of issue is whether carbon dioxide sequestration will have a role to play in reducing the rate of growth of CO2 in the atmosphere in the future (perhaps). Fuel switching is the leading contributer to this reduction (shale gas replacing coal), but as we have seen, much of the international growth in electricity is likely to come from the cheapest, available source: coal.
Some nations have already enacted policies that have resulted in carbon dioxide emission reductions. Below is the artistic representation of the Sleipner natural gas platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway. The rig is extracting natural gas, but like other natural gas wells, will also contain carbon dioxide. Separating and releasing the carbon dioxide is common, however, a carbon tax in Norway makes this expensive. Thus, they sequester the carbon dioxide in a deep saline aquifer under the ocean but above the gas field. With >10 years of experience >10 million toms of carbon dioxide have been stored. This is one of the few large-scale sequestration sites currently in operation. To put this in perspective: a 500 MW coal-fired power plant will generate nearly 4 million tons of CO2 per year.
There are a variety of large-scale point sources of carbon dioxide that could provide an opportunity for sequestration (or in the terminology of the day: carbon capture and storage). These could be electric utilities, cement manufacturing, refineries, ethanol production facilities, and others. If you would like more information on geologic sequestration see the Geologic Sequestration Atlas [3]. The image below shows large-scale point sources of carbon dioxide and the location of deep saline aquifers as well as oil and natural gas fields, and coal basins (some of the coal being too deep to mine and a potential sequestration site). Generally, we have good location citing between sources and sinks. Yet it is unclear how significant a role CCS will be in the future. It will not be enough by itself, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions back to previous levels.
For a look at how the U.S. might meet reduction goals (we are not sure what these reduction goals might be, and it will likely be a moving target):
Workers at Princeton suggested a 7 "wedges" strategy to meet 2004 carbon dioxide emission levels (it now seems that many nations will find the Kyoto reductions out of reach). "Very roughly, stabilization at 500 ppm requires that emissions be held near the present level of 7 billion tons of carbon per year (GtC/year) for the next 50 years, even though they are currently on course to more than double." There are 15 options, any 7 of which combined would provide the stabilization. View Introduction to the Wedges [4] from Princeton University for additional information.
Option 1: Improved fuel economy
Option 2: Reduced reliance on cars. A wedge would also be achieved if the average fuel economy of the 2 billion 2054 cars were 30 mpg, but the annual distance traveled were 5000 miles instead of 10,000 miles.
Option 3: More efficient buildings
Option 4: Improved power plant efficiency. This can be achieved through gasification of coal, oxy-combustion, and other approaches.
Option 5: Substituting natural gas for coalescent from natural gas has fewer CO2 emissions
Option 6: Storage of carbon captured in power plants
Option 7: Storage of carbon captured in hydrogen plants
Option 8: Storage of carbon captured in synfuels plants (carbon capture and storage)
Option 9: Nuclear fission
Option 10: Wind electricity
Option 11: Photovoltaic electricity
Option 12: Renewable hydrogen
Option 13: Biofuels
Option 14: Forest management
Option 15: Agricultural soils management. This is essentially terrestrial carbon capture, increased carbon in the soil.
None of these are easy fixes, each is a grand challenge alone. Together 7 of these will be a grand, grand challenge!
The full paper is: Pacala, S.; Socolow, R., Stabilization wedges: Solving the climate problem for the next 50 years with current technologies. Science 2004, 305 (5686), 968-972.
A word on the Kyoto Protocol. After Australia ratified the protocol in 2008, the U.S. stands alone as a participant who has signed but not ratified the Protocol. The Protocol became active in 2005 when the necessary number of participants (covering a certain percentage of the greenhouse gas emissions) had ratified it. How we move forward is not necessarily tied to the Kyoto Protocol. It will certainly be interesting to see how far we deal with CO2 and how quickly.
The map below shows the world's oil fields. But how much oil is left? The following link contains a table with proven worldwide reserves of oil and natural gas [5]. It’s interesting to see the total worldwide picture in one place and the number of countries that have proven hydrocarbon reserves. However, although it’s popular to measure reserves using the term “proven reserves,” that is not the whole story.
Proven reserves are not a measure of future supply. You have so far seen the simplified picture. Let's dig a little deeper into running out of oil: Look into this site by Bill Kovarik on the oil reserve fallacy. [6] Why is the situation more complex than the simple view? How much oil is there?
The images below show the locations of U.S. refineries and the natural gas pipeline network.
There are a number of observations that can be made from these figures. Firstly, there are concentrations of refineries in the Texas/Louisiana Gulf Coast. There is significant production in those areas and also oil can be offloaded at the major oil ports. The Northeast U.S. has refineries clustered in the coastal areas, again access to both domestic and imported oil. There is obviously a demand for refined products in densely populated areas.
For the natural gas pipelines, there are a number of locations where natural gas can be imported to or exported from the US. This includes 9 LNG (liquefied natural gas) facilities in the continental US and Alaska and an additional one in Puerto Rico. LNG is important to the US in that it allows natural gas to be transported by special ships after converting the gas to a liquid (by lowering the temperature of the gas to minus 160 °C. Prior to the acceptance of this process by the industry, gas was vented to the atmosphere or burned in many places in the world as it was not economical to transport it by pipeline. There are many sources available on the internet if you would like more information on LNG. An overview is here [7]. Bottom line is that natural gas is a desirable fuel that is mostly stranded as we do not yet have the pipelines to export large quantities overseas through LNG shipping terminals.
You can see from the charts below that not all producing countries have significant refining capacities. Countries that have significant oil production such as Nigeria, export crude to other countries and import refined products such as gasoline.
Every year the demand for electricity grows. Traditionally, the bulk of the demand has come from the OECD countries, which include the developed nations. However, there is rapid growth in the "developing countries." Of particular note is the growth associated with China and India.
Given the abundance of coal in many of the developed and developing countries, it seems likely that coal will play an increasingly important role in electricity production. This has implications for carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants, as much of the new capacity in developing nations have limited pollution controls.
Yet with all this growth there are still other considerations for those who will still not have access to electricity. Also, recent reports have questioned if we have access to the coal we think we have. The economics of extraction and the legal access is impacted by graveyards, roadways, etc. An analysis of the Powder River Basin coal field reduced the reserve base by 50%. When we look closer, this may be the case with other fields too. So a 250 year supply is likely on the high side. Perhaps 100 years or so is more likely. We will see.
Yet with all this growth there are still other considerations for those who will still not have access to electricity. Currently in the millions, most of the world is expected to have an increase in electrification and a reduction of those without access to electricity. However, sub-Saharan Africa will increase those without access.
You get a striking view of this inequity (and population clustering) when viewing this well known composite image of the Earth viewed from space at night.
This is the end of the course material. Please complete the Lesson 13 quiz.
Links
[1] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO_Narrative_2021.pdf
[2] https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2020-full-report.pdf
[3] https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/carbon-storage/natcarb-atlas
[4] http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/intro
[5] http://www.eia.gov/countries/
[6] http://environmentalhistory.org/2014/06/19/oil-industry/
[7] http://www.giignl.org/about-lng/lng-basics
[8] http://www.eia.doe.gov