$45 trillion needed to combat warming

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080606/ap_on_...ElIv4UBSSRv24cA

$45 trillion needed to combat warming



By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press WriterFri Jun 6, 7:06 AM ET

The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.

The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a "energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.

"Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.

A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels.

Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans.

Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July.

The IEA report mapped out two main scenarios: one in which emissions are reduced to 2005 levels by 2050, and a second that would bring them to half of 2005 levels by mid-century.

The scenario for deeper cuts would require massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy.

Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the 2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the world's gross domestic product, the report said.

That would be an investment more than three times the current size of the entire U.S. economy.

The second scenario also calls for an accelerated ramping up of development of so-called "carbon capture and storage" technology allowing coal-powered power plants to catch emissions and inject them underground.

The study said that an average of 35 coal-powered plants and 20 gas-powered power plants would have to be fitted with carbon capture and storage equipment each year between 2010 and 2050.

In addition, the world would have to construct 32 new nuclear power plants each year, and wind-power turbines would have to be increased by 17,000 units annually. Nations would have to achieve an eight-fold reduction in carbon intensity — the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of energy — in the transport sector.

Such action would drastically reduce oil demand to 27 percent of 2005 demand. Failure to act would lead to a doubling of energy demand and a 130 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, IEA officials said.

"This development is clearly not sustainable," said Dolf Gielen, an IEA energy analyst and leader for the project.

Gielen said most of the $45 trillion forecast investment — about $27 trillion — would be borne by developing countries, which will be responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Most of the money would be in the commercialization of energy technologies developed by governments and the private sector.

"If industry is convinced there will be policy for serious, deep CO2 emission cuts, then these investments will be made by the private sector," Gielen said.

 

Only $45 trillion?

Out with the old culture of corruption, in with the new.

I mean, $45T is only about 5 years' worth of everything the USA makes and sells. The ENTIRE economy.

I do like the idea of building the nuclear plants. Ain't going to happen here, for the same reasons we're not allowed to explore for oil where the oil actually is.

Go figure.

 

$100/gallon gasoline will cut emissions by quite a bit... That's how the free market works.

Perhaps you get an idea of where I think the science is coming from - not based in actual science, but based in getting a piece of that $45T. Call me dubious, a skeptic!

No doubt the bulk of the burden will be put on the USA to drastically cut emissions while China and India make more and more SUVs for their people, without even the emission standards we have. Not to pick on the people there, just they have over 1B in population each, so magnitude of their policies dwarf what the USA can do.

A little math: to cut our emissions by 50% without building new nuclear plants, we'd have to cut our gasoline usage for autos by 80% (down to 20% of what it is).

And, of course, if we build a lot of solar or wind, it'll mean we have to cut usage by even more than the 80% (the more of this kind of energy, the more it costs elsewhere on the grid). Don't believe me?

Look at the efforts for ethanol! It's crowded out the use of corn in the USA by so much that cows starve or the farmers pay extra (supply/demand) for the feed corn. This drives up the price of milk, meat, and of course, corn. At the same time, the USA had been producing so much surplus, we've been able to feed a lot of the starving people in the world, now we're facing shortages ourselves.

Eco-policies gone amok.

 

^^^ I do believe in global warming, just not that man is doing much to cause it. It's pretty obvious it was a lot colder about 10,000 years ago during the last ice age and it's been warming up ever since. That's without anywhere near the current population (along the way) and without industrial society for most of that time.

I do believe that man can destroy the atmosphere by spewing massive quantities of the right kinds of chemicals, but CO2 isn't one of those chemicals. CFCs absolutely were killing the ozone in the atmosphere; CFCs are not naturally occurring chemicals in the atmosphere.

I don't think it's methane (cow farts) or CO2 that contributes to global warming. At various points in Earth's history, scientists believe it was so cold the entire planet was a big snowball. It was prolonged and gradual geothermal (volcanic) activity that warmed up the planet to the point the snowball began to melt. The whiteness of the glaciers that cover parts of the earth reflects sunlight back into space. The less of it there is, the more dark parts of the earth actually absorb the heat from the sun. So you have a feedback mechanism in play; the earth absorbs the sunlight, this melts more of the glaciers, this in turn makes more dark earth to absorb more sunlight.