The Myth of Future Carbon Reduction Math

Imagine going to a Doctor and having this conversation:

“You’re severely overweight, and if you don’t lose 50 pounds now you’ll become very sick,” he says.?

“OK, Doctor, I’ve got a plan on how to lose weight,” you say.

“Great!?How are you going to do it?” he asks.

“Well, I’m going to the bakery, count up all the cakes, then NOT eat them.?Each cake has about 2000 calories, so if I avoid eating 88 cakes then that’s what I need to lose 50 pounds.?I'll take credit today for not eating those cakes in the future. Voila, I’m skinny!”?

Your doctor would say: "Well, that's great for not getting fatter, but you still need to lose the 50 pounds."

Thud.

Not a very good diet plan, is it?

Hold that thought while we turn our attention to climate change.

With global temperatures continuing to rise, and a correlation between rising temperatures and rising CO2 levels (I'll leave the correlation/causation discussion for another time), lowering our CO2 levels has come under intense focus. If we believe that rising CO2 causes a rise in global temperatures, then if we're to lower our global temperatures we need to lower existing CO2 levels.

Notice I said lower existing CO2 levels, not just slow their growth over time.

And yet, most of the so-called climate solutions these days call for reducing our global CO2 emissions over a period of time.?Whenever you look at a cleaner energy alternative, for example, they will typically say something akin to “saving 3.5 G-tons of carbon emissions,” and then they will account for those savings as if they’ve already happened.

But think about what that really means.

First, carbon emission reductions are promises of potential future savings based on dozens of variables.?If you replace capacity at a coal plant with a solar farm, for example, the potential future savings of that solar system will be accounted for compared to a coal plant.?But what if the energy solar replaces is from a natural gas plant??Since a natural gas plant has lower CO2 emissions than a coal plant, the potential CO2 saved by replacing it with solar is lower.?

Here on California’s central coast, where we get our power from Diablo Canyon’s nuclear facility, replacing nuclear capacity with solar capacity will actually increase CO2 emissions – because nuclear has a lower CO2 emission footprint than solar.?So in this particular case, installing solar is actually increasing CO2 emissions. The point is that emissions reduction accounting is only as good as what it’s being compared to, and will vary depending on the source it’s replacing.

Second, if you replace a coal or gas plant with something renewable like solar or wind, the renewable’s actual generation will vary over time and by location.?We already know about intermittency (how solar and wind resources only produce energy during certain parts of the day), so the amount of energy generated by these sources will fall within a range; and fluctuations of 15-30% in actual energy produced are not uncommon.?The amount of energy produced fluctuates daily, which means that the amount of CO2 they supposedly replace fluctuates daily.?Geography plays a significant role as well, as a solar system in Wisconsin will produce different amounts of electricity than the same solar capacity in California.?

Third, whenever this accounting occurs there is not real replacement happening.?When you install a solar system and it supposedly replaces a coal system, the coal system is not decommissioned; rather, the new solar capacity is added and the overall generation CO2 footprint is increased.?Yes, if entire coal or gas plants are completely decommissioned then solar or wind technically replaces them, but this rarely happens (and if it does, then storage capacity needs to be added to bring it up to 24/7 reliable status).?So in the end, there is really no actual replacement of energy by the so-called accounting.?All we’ve done is just move the numbers around, like a CO2 shell game.

Fourth, how do we know that the savings are ever achieved??Renewable energy systems are not audited for their CO2 reductions, so a running CO2 scorecard is never kept.?We don’t really know if CO2 emissions we account for today ever really happen at all.

Climate modelers account for these variables by taking averages and applying them across the board.?So a wind system’s performance in Texas is averaged with a similar system’s performance in Ohio, then compared against coal plant averages across a range of power plants.?

The same logic holds true for electric vehicles and their emissions replacement.?A recent Wall Street Journal article compared the lifetime emissions of a gas vehicle and a Tesla EV, and noted:?“At 20,600 miles, the greenhouse gas emissions from building and driving the two cars are roughly the same…” and that “emissions will vary based on where the Tesla is charged.”??If the Tesla charges in a coal-powered utility area, then its emissions replacement will be higher than if at a solar-powered facility.?(Article here:?https://www.wsj.com/graphics/are-electric-cars-really-better-for-the-environment/).

All of these future numbers are simply estimates, and there’s no real way to determine if they’re real or not.?Contrast those with things that occur in the past that can be measured with real data, and you understand that these are unfair comparisons:?past performance is fact, and future performances are unreliable estimates.

Imagine using this type of reverse logic in your regular life.

Back to our diet analogy, did you get skinny by not eating 88 cakes? Of course not. You just stopped yourself from getting fatter. You didn't actually save anything.

Can you pay for your child's college with 50% off coupons from a local grocery store? The coupons said savings, but did you bank account get bigger? Of course not; in fact, your bank account got smaller, because you had to spend a dollar to save fifty cents. I'm pretty sure you can't pay Stanford tuition with Vons coupons.

Do you get credit for your dog biting only 1 person instead of the 5 you thought he was going to bite? Does that mean your Akita is a "net-4-human-non-biter"?

Would a bank loan me more money for a higher-paying job that I don't yet have? "But Sir, I'll be making $75,000 more salary in 5 years, so why can't you give me more money today?" It's almost laughable to think about, isn't it?

Yet that's exactly what we're doing with future-guessing climate math.

The logic fails in our everyday lives with everyday things, yet we rely on this faulty thought process almost exclusively when we talk about the climate.

We have allowed the potential of future emission savings to somehow be equal to actual, realized savings, and we treat them the same. They are not. Allowing them to be such lulls us into a false sense of security.

Let's be clear: all energy systems and vehicles add CO2 into the atmosphere and will never be CO2 reducers. Ever. It's not their fault, they're not built to remove CO2. But giving them credit for not being worse polluters is not solving our climate problem. And pretending they're the same stops us from making real climate progress.

Calling future CO2-reduction-promises savings and then counting them as if they've actually lowered CO2 levels is fake math, and distracts us from our real goals.

If we want to lower global temperatures and we believe CO2 is the culprit, we need to remove and lower CO2 levels today.

Donut, anyone?

*The above is an excerpt from my upcoming book called "Climaturity: Why Climate Woke is Broke."*