Urban Ecoist

Despite my issues with coal, some climate modelers have discovered that even if no new coal plants were built from here on out, it would not make much difference in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.

Great, we really are screwed…

Carnegie Mellon’s Jay Apt and Adam Newcomer took a whole bunch of climate data and broke everything down into four scenarios. The first scenario was inertia, that is keep the coal burning to meet increased needs, but with the help of the traditional energy sources we have all come to love. We’ll call this one the control scenario.

The three experimental scenarios all ban new coal plants. Scenarios Two and Three presume that energy needs will continue to increase at historical levels, as seen below in the graph from the Energy Information Administration.

And this graph is only data for the United States…

Anyhoo, Scenario Two is modeled on the premise that wind energy will replace coal in terms of new energy needs with natural gas as a complement. Scenario Three works on the premise that new needs will be met with only natural gas. Scenario Four takes the path of no increase in energy needs (as in the US finally starts using energy efficiently like Jimmy Carter told us to).

The final scenario quenches increased energy needs with wind and natural gas as well, but it assumes that U.S. residents won’t require any more energy than they do today–if, say, people become much more efficient in their energy usage; the only increase in demand would come from a growing population. The team applied the model to three main regions in the United States: the Midwest, Texas, and parts of the East Coast. –Science

Needless to say if you read today’s title, the cut backs in new coal power will not make a significant enough dent in carbon emissions to perhaps maybe possibly mitigate the worst effects of anthropogenic global warming.

In the best cases of the scenarios, carbon emissions may be cut by almost half along the East Coast of the US. However, the low end of the possible range of emission declines in that same case is only 18%. So sure, emissions could be cut by 18 to 48% along the East Coast, but many climate scientists feel that reductions must be cut by 80% in order to stave off significant climate change.

You can click on the link here to read the full set of numbers from the models.

And the ineffectual reductions are not the bad part. If coal goes out of style, and natural gas takes over as America’s energy choice, prices for natural gas could increase from 175 to 500%. Awesome.

energy, coal, power, electricity, United States, power plants, efficiency, climate change, global warming, energy usage