peak carbon

The heated debates over cap-and-trade, carbon taxes and other ideas like a 'Federal Reserve of Carbon' are just pre-game warmup exercises. It will be some time before we reach a new geopolitical stability in a carbon-sensitive economy, and I suspect we may not get down to the serious game of making significant cuts to carbon emissions until volatility settles down. Recent reports suggest that this delay will have serious repurcussions, and is cause for concern.

There is a fundamental point that often is obscured by all the debate and political wrangling: emissions must be reduced to the point where the rate at which it can be sequestered (naturally or artificially) exceeds the rate at which atmospheric carbon is generated. Until this point - call it peak carbon - is reached, the greenhouse effect will cause increased global temperatures.

Just as it is difficult to precisely define the point at which peak oil is reached, it is equally difficult to define the point of peak carbon. Ecological systems are too complex to model accurately, but the body of evidence has been steadily growing in the form of hundreds of empirical studies that show how temperature and the ecology changes as atmospheric carbon changes. Some of these indicate ecological damage, and some demonstrate the ability of ecological sub-systems to compensate for increased carbon. So where does that leave us?

The UNFCCC has agreed, with medium to high confidence, on the concentration of atmospheric carbon that will cause a two-degree increase in global temperatures, and suggests that if this is exceeded, the damage to human society and its supporting agro- and natural ecosystems will be significant. What is not clear is the annual global emission limit for keeping below this level of atmospheric carbon, but an agreement will eventually have to be established so that limits can be set for individual countries.

For now, some countries have set targets to reach the point at which their carbon emissions will peak and then decline. But these targets are generally set through political agreement rather than being based on the current state of climate science. Whether they would cumulatively achieve global peak carbon is doubtful. Most countries will aim at what they consider to be attainable without damaging their economies more than is politically acceptable - the basis of the current debate in the US over mechanisms to limit emissions. The sobering reality is that these targets will almost certainly not be stringent enough to meet the UN's global goal; and on top of that, the UN target is also politically tempered and has been shown to be inadequate to meet the requirements shown by science.

And then there is the question of whether countries can even meet their own targets. Let's take South Africa as an example. While this country has set a target for when emissions should peak, it doesn't have a comprehensive strategy to achieve it. There is a set of Long Term Mitigation Scenarios (LTMS), laying out the emissions scenarios, but it's up to government to figure out how to make a particular scenario a reality.

Eskom is one of the biggest emitters on the African continent, but has only been dabbling in renewable energy. Just recently it has been suggested that Eskom should set a target of 9 to 15% of its energy mix being from renewables by 2018. This report prepared for the WWF by the Energy Research Centre indicates that 15% is feasible and affordable - if planners get cracking right now. This would be a start, but it may not reduce emissions at all.

The Nigerian central bank governor expects sub-Saharan African economies to grow by 3% this year, despite the global economic downturn. South Africa's Finance Minister Trevor Manuel expects something similar for SA. Without any strategy to decouple energy consumption from economic growth, this means that Eskom's emissions will continue to increase even if it meets its target for renewable energy.

Here's why. Under the 'growth without constraints' scenario in the LTMS, energy-related emissions grow by 30% over the next nine years (3% p.a.), an increase of over 100 million tons of CO2 equivalent. If the energy mix is 15% renewables nine years from now, then this will at most reduce energy-related emissions by 65 million tons: still a net increase in emissions. And this assumes that renewables occupy the high end of the suggested range, and that they are applied not only to electricity generation, but to all forms of energy.

The LTMS points out that if South Africa aimed to follow the same emissions tragectory as required by science globally, the country's emissions would need to peak in 2020 at 473 million tons, with emissions in 2050 being 30% to 40% lower than in 2003. This is an impossibility under a 'growth without constraints' scenario, but is the 'required by science' scenario achievable?

The South African government has in fact stated its intent to have carbon emissions peak around 2020 to 2025. But the LTMS notes:

The RBS climate target cannot be met using only known technologies, policies and measures with well-understood parameters, including cost. Put another way, in a carbon-constrained world, it will not be feasible to continue with growth as usual.

I won't go into technical details, but LTMS scenarios were modelled using a number of approaches to reduce emissions, and none of them managed to achieve what is required by science up to 2050. Some did achieve an early fall in emissions, but then showed an increase again later. This means that under the best scenario, there is still a period where emission reductions need to be addressed through currently unproven technologies and behaviour modification, or through a transition to a lower-carbon economy. The latter approach requires favouring economic sectors that use less energy per unit of economic output.

So when we talk of 'greening the economy' in the same breath as 'creating jobs', this has to mean more than just technological substitutions: it means a wholesale transformation of the economy. Anything less than this implies a failure to achieve a peak in carbon output, with attendant environmental and economic impacts.

Remember too that achieving a peak in emissions is not the same thing as 'peak carbon' as I defined it earlier. We may indeed manage to reach a peak in carbon output, but the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere may not peak until later - that depends on a number of partially understood ecological processes. And as long as atmospheric concentrations are high, temperatures will continue increase.

As far as the economy is concerned, the LTMS is revealing in that it shows, for any given strategy to reduce emissions, very little impact on jobs - either positive or negative. In other words, while leaders like Barack Obama suggest a strong link between rescuing the economy and rescuing the environment, the reality is murkier. Environmnental challenges need to be addressed for what they are, not tacked onto other issues. Planners and strategists certainly need to look for synergies across governance sectors, but let's not get carried away with overblown political rhetoric.

And for a really pessimistic endnote, turn to George Monbiot who last week suggested that scientists are already saying that we are too late to prevent a two degree increase in global temperatures. We have squandered our window of opportunity, and may be facing 4 degrees of warming. And under this scenario, there are far greater unknowns in terms of potential impacts - which makes it even more vital that we address mitigation as a matter of urgency, regardless of what economists say is the best ROI.

Comments

[Duncan Drennan]

We have this unhealthy obsession with growth - our economic systems seem to put it ahead of everything else. Sometimes it makes be think of the fat guy eating too much in Monty Python.

We (and especially government) need to focus on making happier people (which requires a happier planet) rather than simply growing our GDP (which is really about creating more consumption).

[Rory]

I agree, Duncan. There was a great article in Tuesday's Cape Times by Jeremy Wakeford about the recession as an "opportunity to craft a more ecologically sustainable and socially just economic system."

Wealth is not distributed equitably in the current global system, and it relies on continuous growth that is resource-hungry and unsustainable. It's not just an energy issue, and not just a climate issue. We are degrading the environment at a frightening rate.

[martin de wit]

Great post and surely hitting some nails on the head. Following your last sentence - in a reality of limited resources and competing needs we will not escape a search for the highest bang for our invested bucks. In my opinion the problem is in the international climate policy regime (what comes after a fragile Kyoto? and how will countries agree to share responsibilities?) and also our slow uptake of adaptation. For South Africa; a largely coal-fired development trajectory comes with greater risks. Are we ready to accept these?