Global ChangeIntersection of Nature and Culture

How much would climate change if we used existing infrastructure to the end of its life?

Saturday, September 11th, 2010

Here’s an interesting thought question:  How much would global temperature warm if we used only the existing energy infrastructure (i.e., power plants, furnaces, motor vehicles) until these machines reached the end of their useful lives?  Once they died, they would be replaced by devices that did not emit CO₂.

Steven Davis and colleagues addressed this question in the current issue of Science:

We calculated cumulative future emissions of 496 (282 to 701 in lower- and upperbounding scenarios) gigatonnes of CO₂ from combustion of fossil fuels by existing infrastructure between 2010 and 2060, forcing mean warming of 1.3°C (1.1° to 1.4°C) above the pre-industrial era and atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ less than 430 parts per million. Because these conditions would likely avoid many key impacts of climate change, we conclude that sources of the most threatening emissions have yet to be built. However, CO₂-emitting infrastructure will expand unless extraordinary efforts are undertaken to develop alternatives.

Their analysis suggests that CO₂ emissions would decline linearly from 35 gigatons/year in 2010 to less than 5 gigatons/year in 2050, with the majority of the remainder being non-energy emissions from things like cement manufacture and land use changes.

On a personal level, this would mean replacing your current furnace, car, and electricity sources with ones that emitted no CO₂, so we’re talking upwards of 15-20 years for a personal vehicle, 20-30 years for a furnace, and 50+ years for power stations, depending on the age of these items.  The average power plant age in the U.S. is 32 years compared to 12 years in China and 21 and 27 years in Japan and Europe.

It’s encouraging to know that it may be possible to avert serious climate change without having to shut down existing infrastructure right away (especially long-lived fossil fuel power plants) but only if we plow significant funding into developing and implementing carbon-free technologies to replace them.  However, Davis et al. acknowledge that this is a tall order:

[T]here is little doubt that more CO₂-emitting devices will be built. Our analysis considers only devices that emit CO₂ directly. Substantial infrastructure also exists to produce and facilitate use of these devices. For example, factories that produce internal combustion engines, highway networks dotted with gasoline refueling stations, and oil refineries all promote the continuation of oil-based road transport emissions. Moreover, satisfying growing demand for energy without producing CO₂ emissions will require truly extraordinary development and deployment of carbon-free sources of energy, perhaps 30 TW by 2050. Yet avoiding key impacts of climate change depends on the success of efforts to overcome infrastructural inertia and commission a new generation of devices that can provide energy and transport services without releasing CO₂ to the atmosphere.

Davis, S., Caldeira, K., & Matthews, H. (2010). Future CO2 Emissions and Climate Change from Existing Energy Infrastructure Science, 329 (5997), 1330-1333 DOI: 10.1126/science.1188566
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Photo credit: Stuck in Customs