Sustainability - - A Focus On Carbon

What if cutting greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), especially CO2, is not the same as increasing the share of electricity generated using renewables? Which would you pick? As an economist, such questions interest me. This kind of question interests me because we face a slew of problems and we have a limited amount of effort available to help solve them.  If we are able to cut CO2 emissions at a lower cost one way rather than some other way, why pick the more costly approach? For many folks, there is no question of deciding between cutting GHG and installing more renewables. They are assumed to be one in the same. Is there any evidence to suggest otherwise? Actually, there is. Electricity planning analysis performed by the Northwest Power Planning Council (NWPPC) is but one such body of work. In their 7th Power Plan, which was released at the beginning of 2016, is a chapter that addresses this very issue. Here's another source. What the NWPPC found is that cheaper and more e...

The often cited study by Mark Jacobson et. al. that asserts it's economic to replace every fossil fuel use with either electricity from wind, water, and sun (WWS-only) or hydrogen produced using WWS-only in 139 countries over the next 33 years implies a massive construction program the likes of which we may not have ever seen. I find it useful to compare the implied construction program to what we have experienced in the recent past. Click  here  to see his paper on the 50 U.S. states. Over the next 33 years, even under his extraordinary drop in total electric load, he envisions approximately 5.8 million MW of new generation are needed (plus an additional 600GW for peaking and system stability). He reports that as of 2013, 2.71% (of 5.8 million MW) is currently installed, or approximately1.6 million MW. Such quantities indicate an extraordinary construction program, especially since the U.S. installed capacity rose by only about 177,400MWs over the eight year pe...