I’ve put up quite a few posts supporting the conclusion of the Stern review that large cuts in C02 emissions could be achieved at very modest economic cost. Mostly, the analysis has focused on policies aimed at reducing developed country emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 and 60 per cent by 2050, and the typical conclusion is that the cost would be around 1 per cent of national income. For Australia, at current income levels that would be about $10 billion per year. Today’s news reports a study by McKinsey estimating a much smaller cost, around $3 billion per year. I haven’t seen the report yet but a quick Google found a similar study for the US.
I suspect the report is over-optimistic in the sense that it estimates the cost of doing the job in the most technically efficient fashion, whereas any feasible policy to induce adoption of the necessary measures will have higher costs. But it’s easy to show that the order of magnitude estimate must be approximately right. You can see this by looking at an absolute upper bound assuming we just replace all energy generation by expensive but feasible sources like solar (given the costs of generation, the extra cost required for large grids and pumped storage to smooth out supply variability is a rounding error here). That cost is no more than 10 per cent of income. Taking account of the obvious adjustment responses such reduced consumption in response to higher energy prices implies an even tighter bound, maybe 5 per cent of income.
The most important criticism to be made here is that it is increasingly evident that a 60 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050 may well not be enough. That suggests that, after exhausting the easy options to improve energy efficiency, substitute away from energy intensive activities and so on, there will be a residual 40 per cent of energy demand, almost entirely electricity, that has to be delivered with less than half the emissions of current best practice. Taking Australia’s current consumption of around 250 Twh/year, that’s 100 TwH at a cost of maybe $25 billion a year (=25c/Kwh) or 2.5 per cent of GDP.
One point that came up in the earlier thread linked above, and that I wanted to note, is that the problem of intermittent supplies of solar and wind, much stressed by some pessimists, will be greatly mitigated by a shift to electric vehicles/plug-in hybrids. 10 million or so car batteries would constitute a large storage capacity for Australia. At a minimum, assuming pricing reflected scarcity, recharging would be timed to match high availability of cheap electrons (motorists are ready-trained to hunt for cheap fuel, so no cultural change needed here, and the meters currently being rolled out are sophisticated enough for this kind of thing).
With slightly more advanced technology, but not requiring any fundamental breakthroughs, car batteries could recharge the grid in times of peak demand (some of my colleagues at the ARC Centre for Complex Systems have been looking at this).
John Quiggin 
But has any economist taken account of the tendency of human innovation to speed up when the motivation is higher? That is, now that increasing efficiency and finding new energy sources are “interesting problems” with significant rewards attached to them, businesses will become more innovative than they would have been otherwise. And now that there are new challenging problems to solve, employees are likely to be motivated to work more productively.
Others have pointed out at least one other economic benefit of “cleantech” type jobs: they are not easily off-shoreable.
If GDP growth is held back by anything in the coming decades, I don’t see it being the attempt to de-carbonise the economy.
The first 30-40% of “low hanging fruit” will actually be pretty cheap and achieved mainly through energy efficiency. Its the last 30-40% that’s going to be expensive. Very expensive.
Good to see you coming around John!
Of course, it should be noted that our leaders show absolutely no sign of taking 60% reductions seriously, let alone 80-90%.
We live in a country where huge imported SUVs get a tax break, the FBT encourages you to drive further, state governments subsidise petrol (Queensland of course!) and we can fly between capital cities for less than $100. If we can’t fix these small things, what chance 90% reduction by mid-century?
Buckleys to none.
“there will be a residual 40 per cent of energy demand, almost entirely electricity,”
There at least three extremely intractable areas of emissions that are not in the energy sector: steel production, cement production and air transport.
Of those three, steel production is probably the easiest to decarbonise – there are already prototype plants working using thermal lance technology that require little or no coal.
Cement and air transport are more problematic.
If we accept that the long-term objective for the developed countries has to be a 90%+ reduction in emissions, then we may have to settle for a lower level or reductions in those three areas and seek to virtually eliminate emissions from the energy and surface transport sectors.
We won’t have a 90% reduction by mid-century.
But so long as we can maintain the capacity for big technological solutions (including geo-engineering), we’ll use them, and they’ll likely work well enough to keep at least the wealthy countries of the world doing OK.
Given the current BRIC boom, that should actually mean most of the world’s population.
It’s Africa I don’t have too much hope for.
It’s either that or the global economy will completely collapse, and emissions levels will plummet anyway.
Either way, we’re not likely to cook the planet irreparably.
Relax everybody the technology is upon us http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,23216816-2682,00.html?from=public_rss
44c/kwhr buyback when I pay between 7c off-peak and 22c peak now,(about 16c average) coupled with up to $10k Fed govt subsidy and REC credits and and I’m ringing up the 10% after tax, risk free returners right now. There was going to be a sunset clause in 2013, but thank God for the Greens and their 20 years amendment. I’m going into the power generation business pronto. Struggletown are going to be positively Green with envy, but then you know how it is guys. We’ve all gotta make sacrifices for the planet and those State Cabinet CO2 offsets.
Has anyone really done the sums on the SA govt’s new new law? I don’t think the new prices will make our solar panels (installed in 2002 with approx. 20% govt capital subsidy) profitable.
We need the new technologies – e.g. dye photovoltaics e.g. http://www.dyesol.com – to drive steep declines in capital cost.
I believe there are alternatives to cement such as
Eco-cement
Sounds too good to be true. Lets hope they can deliver.
Agreed on air transport. There will be some efficiency gains over coming decades (in the order of 20-50%) but this will be more than offset by rapid growth in air travel.
To quote Monbiot again:
Hilarious! We have to stop pretending we can allow air travel to expand exponentially.
carbonsink, air travel for all is a very recent development, one that is not cemented into our cultures and expectations, one that can be manipulated out with some easy price signals. I reckon it’s more solvable than other problems.
Sailing ships will be cool too.
Cemented?! 🙂
Which politician is going to tell the public that sub-$100 air travel is no more? It ain’t gonna happen. The only way air travel will be curtailed is by oil prices going through the roof (which is entirely possible).
I can’t see any government deliberately slowing development of new airport capacity, can you? That would be like stopping new road construction. Hugely unpopular.
I can’t see any government whacking on a hefty flight tax, just when we got used to flying to the Gold Coast on Jetstar for $49. Can you?
Oh BTW, according to Monbiot emissions from international flights aren’t counted in either country’s emissions, they just conveniently disappear. Also, apparently there is no tax on aviation fuel for international flights.
Politicians wont have to tell the public anything, prices will simply go up. The prices will rise with the reduced oil supply, and as part of a more comprehensive carbon tax. The planned airport expansions will be shelved, because the planes wont be landing. Since they’re privatised, this isn’t very political, it’s the market.
Perhaps Richard Branson should be investing his environmental efforts and money into Very Fast Trains instead of/as well as ethanol fuels.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/02/alstom-unveils.html#more
Yes, observa. We know. But I don’t think you can accuse our host – or, frankly, the Australian plogosphere – of ignoring this point.
As far as air travel goes, there are alternatives in the longer term, including hydrogen.
“Has anyone really done the sums on the SA govt’s new new law?”
Sure have. A basic system producing 5.01Kwhr/day on average, costs between $4500-$6500 net installed after $8501 Govt subsidy. Now that’s 5.01 x 0.44 x 365 or $804.60 and that’s 17.9% return on $4500 or 12.4% on the dearer $6500 outlay. Kick up to a 10.5Kw/hr average system ($13950-$15950 nett outlay with $9050 subsidy) and that’s $1686.30 or 12.08% to 10.6% depending on cost. I pay about $1500/yr now for power (all electric) and if I produce/sell more than I consume/spend I will get it rebated back to me. The falling returns are due to the fixed $8000 Fed subsidy although REC credits rise with output offsetting that marginally. You should know your average output per day and times by 0.44 by 365 will give you your annual return on outlay. Federal tax clawback aside here, there’s no need to guess who’s subsiding that risk free after tax return as your power utility passes on their new cost of 44c/kwhr. That’s the new green leftism of subsidies and quantity controlling for you, rather than level playing field resource taxing. Enjoy!
wilful, ships will have to sail. came across an article recently that pointed out that shipping has escaped emission controls, and it’s not negligible: more than air travel.
i remember some numbers from a design project done in 1960: 8 knots, 800 hp. 16 knots,6000 hp. this was a small gp trader of 1000 tons, what a lot of co2 modern tankers must be emitting!
mb globalization isn’t going to last…
So many with the curse of the dismal science upon them Robert, yet ever faster down this dismal path. In one respect I guess it makes some sort of sense.
SA’s feed-in solar tariff is curiously similar to Germany’s 45 eurocents per kwh. Last I heard they wanted to build 20 new coalfired power station. None of the energy savers mentioned appears capable of the dramatic CO2 cuts Pr Q cites. I haven’t seen the latest technofix estimates but here are some problems: clean coal -doesn’t work, nuclear -unpopular, carbon taxes -raise prices, biofuels and offsets -dubious claims, wind and solar -high capex and energy storage problem unsolved, efficiency -recessionary beyond shallow cuts, and so on.
I think our present economy feasts when everything is within easy reach and starves when it gets a bit harder. I’ll think we’ll change GDP to some other measure of wellbeing to tell ourselves we’re keeping up with ‘aspirations’.
As we’ve discussed before Robert, the real alternative to isn’t hydrogen (poor energy density, high pressure tank, expensive to produce, puts water vapour in upper atmosphere, leaks out of everything etc etc etc) but propellor planes, perhaps even piston-engined propellor planes. They’re not that slow (~900km/h), they’re more efficient, and they’ll run on conventional fuels including biofuels.
Oil increased from ~$10/bbl in the late 1990s to $100/bbl in 2008. If we get another 10-fold increase over the next 10 years, then we’re looking at $1,000/bbl oil around 2017-2018.
Does globalisation work at one thousand dollars a barrel?
Carbonsink: sure, those too.
Not to mention capturing CO2 directly out of the atmosphere, which may become affordable.
carbonsink, the rise has been closer to linear than exponential though. On that basis, I would expect $200/bbl by 2018, although $300/bbl wouldn’t surprise me. $1000/bbl by 2018 would be truly devastating to world trade and all sorts of things. I would think actual supply shortages would occur before that sort of price.
I haven’t read all of the McKinsey report yet, but my first impression is that it seems quite good. It should considerably reduce the uncertainty about climate change abatement costs. Their estimate of a gross cost of only $2.9 billion to the Australian economy of a 30% reduction in emissions by 2020 suggests that cost-benefit analysis would imply much greater reductions in emissions would be optimal. I say this because of the conclusions of David Spratt and Philip Sutton in “Climate Change Red” and Martin Weitzman in “On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change” which both suggest that the risks from low probability high cost impacts of climate change should dominate decision making.
It is interesting that the McKinsey report estimates that about 80 Mt CO2-e of emissions abatement will have very significant gross benefits (negative costs). This is primarily from buildings where negative costs average around $125 per tonne CO2-e! This is very much due to market failures such as misaligned incentives between builders and tenants. It sounds like a case for urgent improved regulations of energy efficiency for building construction. It would be cheaper to build efficient buildings now than retrofit them later. Addressing these split incentives directly by splitting the costs of utilities between landlords and tenants would also be a good idea.
It is interesting that the largest source of emissions abatement is in forestry sectors (109 Mt Co2-e) . This includes avoided deforestation, reforestation, afforestation, conservation tillage, forest management and biomass. I argued for significant emissions abatement in this area to be funded from auctioning permits in a submission to the Garnaut review. Many of these activities will have additional cobenefits in terms of reducing and reversing the habitat destruction that is driving much of the species loss in Australia.
Forest management is an interesting one. At the moment this is not measured as part of Australia’s greenhouse gas accounts. This means that when an old growth forest is logged, if a forest will grow back then emissions are not measured. This suggests that options for including all lands in Australia’s greenhouse gas accounts should be considered.
Robert, capturing C02 directly out of the atmosphere is already affordable – it’s called photosynthesis! Are humans likely to perfect a better technology than that in the next 40 years? Natural selection has been working on it for billions of years.
Peter Wood – is it really a market failure that buildings are not energy efficient?
I’s say the failure is with the renters – if renters actually discriminated based on running costs, that would provide the incentive for builders (and even existing owners) to supply more efficient buildings. So how can we motivate renters to discriminate based on running costs?
Again, boosting the cost of energy seems like it should be sufficient – at least for longer-term renters. But an educational / informational campaign would probably help too, given that people naturally tend to discount ongoing future costs.
For cases where buildings are only ever occupied by short-term renters (<12 months), it’s more problematic.
Carbonsink,
I don’t know why you worry about the price of oil. There are lots of alternatives, like methane, or ones that we already know work now, like converting coal to oil, as appears the Chinese government knows also.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200706/22/eng20070622_386664.html
Also, if you are worried about flights internal to Australia, then sticking in a fast-train seems much more sensible than propellar air-craft and the like, as any European can tell you (perhaps you need to travel more to see how other countries work).
conrad, there are lots of very good reasons to be concerned about the price of oil. And if CTL is the best alternative (it’s not economic yet, but may well be in the next decade), then we can expect to see CO2 levels go well above what any climate scientist would claim was “safe”.
I’d love to see a VFT in Australia, but given the distance our cities are apart, it’s not all that useful to compare Australia to Europe. Further, they travel about 1/3rd the speed of planes, so you’re looking at 6 or 7 hours from Melbourne to Brisbane.
To me, the fascinating thing about this debate is the split between those who say “It won’t hurt much” (Tim Flannery, for example) and those who say “You’ve all got to suffer” (Clive Hamilton).
That doesn’t have much to do with the science but is mostly dependent on the inclinations of the writer.
Clive H has been arguing that for a long time and has only recently joined the climate change issue.
Which perhaps suggests that all of us are victims of our fundamental beliefs….
I think you don’t know about VFTs wizofaus. As an example, I take one where I work now and then between two cities in France that are about 800ks away (very similar to Melbourne to Sydney). It takes 3 hours, you go from centre of city to centre of city, and you can get on the train 2 minutes before it leaves (and buy the ticket 4 minutes before). This is _faster_ than all the hassles included in air-travel (getting to the airport, going through customs, waiting for the plane to be late again, etc). You can also take any old crap on it you want (I take a bike and sometimes laptop that I do work on whilst travelling). If there was such a service between Melbourne and Sydney (a trip I also do now an then), I would never take the plane, just like I never do in France for such a similar trip (and I imagine many people would be similar, especially given that it is also cheaper).
As for the price of oil — I’m just not concerned about it reaching astronomical levels — since it won’t (or at least it won’t for long) as there are heaps of alternatives. Whether they happen to generate more CO2 or not is another argument (I personally think new technologies that don’t generate much CO2 will become much cheaper over time — as they already are doing. If they don’t I’m sure we’ll be putting up with a warmer world).
“I think you don’t know about VFTs wizofau”
The difference, conrad, is population density. Capital intensive systems like VFT or even metro systems need very dense populations, which we don’t have in Australia.
Mass transit needs mass people. Otherwise you should use flexible low capital system like busses.
Ken,
I agree with metro systems, but not longer train lines. The line I take, for example, is from Marseille (population 1.5 million — including Aix, Cassis etc.) to Paris (11 million — the RP). Thats 12.5 million versus Melbourne plus Sydney, which is 7.5 million. There are also now lots of other little TGV lines around the place, which seem to survive just fine (the TGV is profitable in France) despite low population densities in many of the regions. Thus I’m not sure what population density you really need to have a decent train service (its not like TGV is any different to a normal service, excluding that it goes at 300ks per hour and needs better tracks — if it can’t exist, I don’t see why normal passenger trains can). Busses are obviously out, because they go too slowly and people would still take the plane for long distances.
Not that I’m demographer, but as for smaller lines, I imagine the best benefit would be Sydney-Newcastle-Wollongong and Melbourne-Geelong-Ballarat, which would allow better population distribution (it would be quicker to go from, say, Newcastle to Sydney’s centre than many of the suburban lines to Sydney’s centre). Surely lines like this would be hugely popular.
What we really need is some kind of self-replicating, self-sufficient widget, that captures CO2 out of the atmosphere and stores it, using just sunlight and water. Oh yeah … we chopped those down.
Short of a global recession, we’re gonna see $300/bbl by 2010. Remember, we haven’t hit peak yet. If we actually hit peak, and global oil production declines while China’s boom continues unabated, the sky’s the limit.
Really?! Can they convert coal to liquid fuel? Those Chinese really are clever. And those fast trains you speak of sound cool. I must go to another country one day. 🙂
I think the “It won’t hurt much� camp is still trying to win the political argument and convince government to do something (anything!) about climate change. The “You’ve all got to suffer� camp (e.g. Monbiot) has moved on from that and have actually looked at what is required to solve the problem.
Ideas like transport corridors might achieve big energy cuts but they require a massive investment with popular support. The current mindset is that results can be achieved with minor and relatively painless incremental changes. Thus year after year we hang our hopes on the latest technical innovation then abandon it for the next fad oblivious to lack of progress; remember we were supposed to be driving hydrogen cars by now.
That’s why I expect difficulties to keep piling up with associated finger pointing such as the demonization of China. If we were on track emissions would be declining and they are not.
Oh I’m just fascinated to know what those “heaps” of alternatives are, and so would every oil company in the world. Please do tell. I’m all ears!
The shakeout will be massive I am sad to say. Humanity entered this century with 6 billion people. Humanity will exit this century in the range of zero to 1 billion persons. Extinction is a real possibility at one end of the scale and it’s hard to see enough energy sources, food sources and clean waters sources being left to support more than 1 billion people at the upper end.
It is just so depressing listening to Anthony Albanisi talk about the big wins in jobs and infrastructure investment with the expansion of air services to the US today. This from a former shadow environment minister!
What a load of Malthusian tripe.
I’ll wager $100,000 in 2008 USD that by the end of the century there are less people dying from starvation as do so today, and that the Earth’s population is at least 5B.
“Oh I’m just fascinated to know what those “heapsâ€? of alternatives are, and so would every oil company in the world”
There’s lots of technologies. Like converting coal (essentially limitless) to liquid fuel, which incidentally isn’t new at all (it was done in WWII by the Germans, for example — I believe many places in the world are thinking about it again — not just China, where the process has begun. Try googling “Montana oil conversion” for example). There are also all the more expensive hydrocarbons to extract that we don’t generally do now but will become viable (e.g., tar sands), hydrocarbons that people will surely develop the technology to extact (methane). Similarly, it isn’t hard to imagine that things like wind, solar, nuclear etc. will get used more and more as the price goes up also for things where liquid fuel can be substituted.
carbonsink, $300/bbl by 2010 would pretty much guarantee a global recession.
There’s only so high the price can go before it seriously starts affecting demand.
And given out inefficiently and wastefully we use oil currently, there’s plenty of room for demand to be reduced.
pablo – it needn’t be depressing. You could reasonably make an argument that increased competition will lead to increased incentive to make flights more efficient and less polluting.
conrad, CTL, GTL, oil sands and oil shale, are all feasible, but all have major problems:
1. They don’t scale. All attempts to ramp up production have proved prohibitively expensive.
2. The energy return is poor. Almost as much energy is required to extract and refine the resource as is returned by burning it.
3. The carbon emissions per barrel of oil produced are much higher than for conventional crude.
For more than 100 years crude oil has gushed out of the ground for free. That era is about to end. All alternatives in the furure will be much more expensive in terms of money, energy and environmental consequences.
That’s what they said about $50/bbl, $80/bbl and $100/bbl. We’re still waiting.
IMO, very high oil prices will drive lots of bilateral deals between oil producing and consuming nations much like China is doing in Africa now. The Chinese will do whatever’s required to keep their economy going by securing an affordable oil supply … and we’ve already seen the lengths an oil-industry dominated US adminstration will go to!
Its the third world where the demand destruction will occurs. Already has actually.
On energy issues I think Australia should take the autarky road. It would solve both our energy security and carbon footprint issues in the long run. We can’t clean up the world but we can clean up Australia.
Why are we importing petrol and diesel and exporting natural gas? This is madness. We should phase out all energy exports except (where necessary) to the USA. There’s a bit real politik from the Ikonoclast. I don’t like the US but they will still be the least worst superpower in the next 50 years. China will go “cracker dog” when it realises there aint enough fossil energy in the world for it to complete its transition to superpower. Russia under Putin or anyone like him will remain as extremely nasty proposition.
Energy and alliances will be survival now (if there is any survival at all.) We need to phase out oil imports except for some heavy fractions for lubrication and perhaps diesel until that is phased out. We need to convert our petrol fleet to methane and the mixes of slightly heavier gaseous fractions (CNG and LPG). We need to use all our gas resources ourselves and stop pi**ing them over to China.
Then we need to phase out coal fired power stations in one generation (30 years). We need to phase out all thermal coal exports for power but perhaps allow coking coal exports for steel making. All uranium exports must be banned except if the US wants some uranium. (Another piece of real politik.)
Large solar convection tower projects must be started NOW scaling up though 250m 500m, 750m and then 1000 m towers. These towers will easily provide all base load power needed within a genration (30 years). The physical footprints will be no bigger than power station and coal mine infrastructures and the carbon footprint will be much lower.
Methane powered and electric powered vehicles can run via methane generation and re-charging. Methane generation from solar power and then combustion of that methane is essentially a closed loop with no carbon footprint other than the inbuilt carbon cost in the infrastructure and vehicle fleet manufacture.
Hydrogen is a dud fuel so forget it. Low energy density and difficulty of handling and storage mean that it will never match methane for practical application.
The physics of the above proposal will work. The EROI will be well in the positive range, carbon footprint will be low enough for Australia to be carbon neutral when combined with reafforestation.
Because the physics will work the economics will work. Economics properly conceived is essentially a sub-branch of physics. It’s high time main stream economists beagan to realise that.
“There’s lots of technologies. Like converting coal (essentially limitless) to liquid fuel,”
Until recently I tended to accept this.
Then I did some additional reading.
Estimated coal reserves have many of the same data problems as estimated oil reserves. In particular, may of the stated reserved are inferred only and haven’t been updated for years.
China, for example, hasn’t revised its coal reserves since the 1980’s – despite mining over a billion tons of the stuff per year.
Additionally, demand is already growing at around 5% per year, add in a big one-off increase over a decade or so to allow for widespread use of coal to oil technology and then allow the higher total to continue to grow at circa 5% per year and our several hundred years worth of coal is gone in 30 or 40 years.
Oh and let’s not forget that oil and natural gas are currently used as the feedstock for virtually all our plastics and synthetic compounds. AS those become scarcer and more expensive, coal is likely to substitute for them there as well.
“CTL, GTL, oil sands and oil shale, are all feasible, but all have major problems”
I’m a technology optimist. As long as billions (and billions and billions) of dollars are at stake, I’m sure someone will find a solution to some of them (also, I don’t for example know why you think CTL is not scaleable — I’m sure we’ll see plants pop up all over the place in the next decade). I also don’t see any real problems to nuclear (excluding political). Go ask the French whether you think nuclear is a problem — which means energy from such plants could be substituted for heating oil etc. in many countries, hence reducing the demand on liquid fuels (let alone if people start using electricity for mass transit). I think the main thing that will stop these advances is if cleaner technologies become cheaper quickly, which I believe is already happening now, so you never know your luck.
“IMO, very high oil prices will drive lots of bilateral deals between oil producing and consuming nations much like China is doing in Africa now. The Chinese will do whatever’s required to keep their economy going by securing an affordable oil supply … and we’ve already seen the lengths an oil-industry dominated US adminstration will go to!
Its the third world where the demand destruction will occurs. Already has actually.”
By now we’re all aware of the problems with grain-derived biofuels.
How many people are aware that India is in the course of planting 40 million hectares of Jatropha bushes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_oil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_incentives_in_India#Practices
Large plots of waste land have been selected for Jatropha cultivation and will provide much needed employment to the rural poor of India.Businesses are also seeing the planting of Jatropha as a good business opportunity. The Government of India has identified 400,000 square kilometres (98 million acres) of land where Jatropha can be grown, hoping it will replace 20% of India’s diesel consumption by 2011.
Implementation
The former President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, is one of the strong advocaters of jatropha cultivation for production of bio-diesel. In his recent speech, the President said that out of the 60 million hectares (600,000 km²) of wasteland that is available in India over 30 million hectares (300,000 km²) are suitable for Jatropha cultivation. Once this plant is grown the plant has a useful lifespan of several decades. During its life, Jatropha requires very little water when compared to other cash crops.
And on the same general theme of fuel substitution in India:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7243247.stm
“An engineer has promised that within a year he will start selling a car in India that runs on compressed air, producing no emissions at all in towns.
The OneCAT will be a five-seater with a glass fibre body, weighing just 350kg and could cost just over £2,500.
The project is being backed by the Indian conglomerate, Tata for an undisclosed sum. It says the technology may also be used for power generation.
The car will be driven by compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks.
The tanks, built into the chassis, can be filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes – much quicker than a battery car.
Alternatively, it can be plugged into the mains for four hours and an on-board compressor will do the job.
For long journeys the compressed air driving the pistons can be boosted by a fuel burner which heats the air so it expands and increases the pressure on the pistons. The burner will use all kinds of liquid fuel.
The designers say on long journeys the car will do the equivalent of 120mpg. In town, running on air, it will be cheaper than that.
Analysts say the fact that the project has the backing of an internationally well known company such as Tata makes the idea much more marketable.”
The air car is obviously not a solution to the greenhouse problem – in India it will likely derive its power from coal-generated electricity.
But it does show that companies are responding to the high oil price by finding substitues.
Ian,
On the flipside, I believe a number of huge resevoirs of coal have been found in the last decade (like the stuff off Norway’s coast), its just that the it is harder to get at — but I’m sure people will try and get it if neccesary. My hope would be that coal starts becoming replaced by other technologies. I might note that Chinese government certainly understands the problems of coal use, and whilst they aren’t doing lots about it quickly, they certainly try and promote it (Suntech, for example, was given start-up money by the Chinese government).
Ikonoclst, I’d add two major points to your proposal.
1. Sequester carbon dioxide from coal-fired plants, use water and solar energy to convert it to methane, burn the methane in gas-powered powerplants and then close the loop by reprocessing it back into methane.
Solar generated methane gets around all the problems with the intermittency of solar and wind power and allows us to continue using existing gas-powered powerplants, reducing the financial land resource cost of the transition.
2. Develop biofuels industries in the outback based on Jatropha and algae, This would probably allow us to go beyond autarky and become an energy exporter.
Re Comment #46 above. It may prove an interim useful solution in energy cost terms to use the CO2 from coal-to-syngas power plants IF coal-to-syngas power plants are developed. However, if the CO2 is processed to methane (by solar power) which is then combusted back to CO2 and water then I don’t see that any CO2 emissions are thereby avoided. Solar convection power is better used for direct electricity generation.
Personally, I wouldn’t give the fossil fuel industry any oxygen at all. (That’s a pun of sorts.)
Conversion of even indedible plant matter to biofuels (essentially photosynthesis of biofuels if we name the first and last steps) will never be an efficient use of land or water. Better to just whack up the towers.
The biosphere is a closed system energy-wise except for incoming energy from the sun and heat energy from the earth’s core. Energy is also lost back to space by radiation.
Clean and inexhaustible energy (until the end of the earth or sun) can only come from the core and from the sun. Geo (hot rocks) can supply some niche energy. The bulk will have to come from solar power either directly and solar power indirectly in the form of winds, tides and hydro. Winds, tides and the natural water cycle all being powered by solar energy of course.
carbonsink, there’s a very big difference between $10/yr rises in oil price (1998-2008), and $100/yr rises (2008-2010)
Actually, most of the increase has happened since 2002 when the growth starts to look decidedly non-linear (chart).
Oil started 2007 at $50/bbl and ended the year at $100/bbl (chart). If we heat peak by 2010 (and that’s still a big if) or some Katrina-like crisis hits the oil industry, then I believe $300/bbl by 2010 is entirely possible.
Ian, I’ve read dozens of compressed air car stories in recent years. They never seem to go anywhere. To quote the BBC story you link to:
Enough said.
Jatropha is promising. Certainly infinitely preferable to palm oil plantations in SE Asia.
Conrad, I suggest you read about the problems scaling up production in the Alberta oil sands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Tar_Sands#Future_production
Best estimates: Less than 5 mbpd (most of it bitumen) by 2020 when according to most forecasts world oil demand will be closer to 120 mbpd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Tar_Sands#Environmental_impacts
Even if you ignore the horrendous energy requirements and greenhouse emissions, the real limiting factor seems to be the amount of water in the Athabasca River and a shortage of skilled labour.
Most of the same issues that apply equally to coal-to-liquids. Its inherently expensive and energy intensive to refine a poor quality hydrocarbon (coal, oil sands, oil shale) into a good quality hydrocarbon (liquid fuel).
Is that supposed to be good news? Just about the worst thing that could happen to humanity at the moment is to discover huge reserves of coal.