POWER August 2016 - 56

COMMENTARY
Climate Change and Energy:
We Need a Bigger Boat
Armond Cohen
R
eaders of a certain age will recall a scene in the movie Jaws
when the local police chief, having glimpsed the gigantic
shark up close from the back of the deck, reels back into
the cockpit to observe: " You're going to need a bigger boat. "
In climate change, we have reached the " bigger boat " moment.
The December 2015 Paris Agreement committed 195 nations to
limit global warming to 2.5 degrees Celsius, with a further aim
of 1.5 degrees. That will require completely eliminating carbon
emissions from the world's energy system sometime soon after
2050. That's virtually tomorrow in energy system terms.
Wringing all the carbon out of the system would be hard
enough if world energy demand were flat. But it is slated to grow
by more than half to 2050. We need a zero-carbon energy system
much larger than the entire system we have today, which is 85%
powered by fossil fuels and has no carbon abatement.
Cargo for the Big Boat
We have many options in theory: energy efficiency, renewable
energy, advanced nuclear energy, carbon capture, and carbon
removal from the atmosphere. But all of these options are, relatively
speaking, in their early stages, or face real barriers to
scale and cost. Most studies, from the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change to the United Nations Deep Decarbonization
Pathways Project, have for this reason urged diversity and substantial
innovation to create more and better options-in short,
a very big boat. A brief look at the horizon suggests why.
Energy Efficiency. Energy efficiency has improved significantly
since the 1970s. But substantial further efficiency improvements
are already assumed in the growth figures cited
above. While some studies have suggested flat demand, they
assume annual end use efficiency improvement rates of 3% to
4% per year, while actual global improvement has averaged 1%.
And recent field tests have suggested energy efficiency performance
may not always match optimistic engineering estimates.
An important part of the flotilla, yes. A destroyer? Maybe not.
Carbon Capture. Capturing carbon has been commercially
demonstrated on gasified coal and refining for decades, and its
application to electric power at commercial scale is now under
way. Three projects are built or under construction in North
America (see " SaskPower's Boundary Dam Carbon Capture Project
Wins POWER's Highest Award, " POWER, August 2015). But not all
fossil fuel plants can be retrofitted, and costs remain a barrier
to wider adoption absent tighter carbon regulation. Advanced
lower-cost power cycles that integrate carbon separation, such
as NetPower's Allum Cycle (a demonstration project is being built
in Texas), are the kinds of options needed.
Renewables. Wind and solar will undoubtedly comprise a
large share of the decarbonization strategy, but claims that they
can provide all or most global power needs at reasonable cost
56
should be viewed with great caution.
A variety of detailed studies, from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, to Europe's Zero Emissions Platform,
have shown that, even with the availability of low-cost
battery storage, and unlimited and unconstrained transmission,
very high renewable electrical systems will continue to require
lots of firm, dispatchable energy for the weeks and even months
when wind and solar are not available at scale. This parallel system
of firm capacity will add substantially to costs.
Physical build-out also cannot be blithely assumed. A recent
study calling for 100% renewable energy in the U.S. posited,
just for starters, that every coastal state would have 72 offshore
wind farms the size of the as-yet-unbuilt Cape Wind project (468
MW), and every state would host 50 Tehachapi-sized (705 MW)
land-based wind farms.
Nuclear. Nuclear energy provides, after hydroelectric power,
most of the world's carbon-free electricity. Because of its rapid
build-out of nuclear energy in the 1970s and 80s, France is the
only industrial nation that comes close to the Paris Agreement's
implied power emissions targets. But for reasons that are welldocumented,
repeating
a French-style scale-up with current
water-cooled nuclear technology is unlikely. It is typically more
expensive than fossil fuel generation, making it a tough choice
for firm power in developing countries; it is slower to build than
coal or gas; and the need for pressurized water containment
means very large amounts of concrete and steel plus long construction
times with associated financing costs.
A new generation of non-light water designs is now under development
that could address these problems. The use of alternative
coolants substantially simplifies and reduces the size of these plants,
allowing them to be mass manufactured at lower cost, like airplanes,
rather than laboriously constructed on site. Many have fuel cycles
needing much less host country attention, and much smaller, lesstoxic,
and less-weaponizable waste streams. But these options must
be commercially proven, and that will not happen by itself.
Full Speed to Zero
The challenge is not easy, but it is straightforward. We need
aggressive innovation and commercialization across all zerocarbon
options. In particular, we need faster development of
zero-carbon firm capacity options such as advanced nuclear and
decarbonized fossil energy, which have to date received, comparatively
speaking, almost no attention.
Success in tackling climate change is not assured. But without
a diverse strategy, failure is likely. Small may be beautiful, but in
this case we need a bigger boat. ■
-Armond Cohen is executive director of the Clean Air Task
Force, an environmental organization that advances policies and
commercial innovation to fight climate change.
www.powermag.com
POWER | August 2016
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POWER August 2016

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