If the cost of oil is $65/BBl (is this in constant 2008 dollars?) from 2030-2050, how many alternative (and I’m not talking about exotic) sources of energy and related energy efficiency will either become more economical, not change or more expensive on the margins for local developed and developing economies at higher prices? And how can anyone project energy production and prices that far in advance?

Mr. Pielke’s questioning of the assumptions of the report is valid. Slight variations in projections, compounded annually for 30-50 years, skew any estimates of the future costs and energy efficiency. But the rewards of any scenario (CO2 reduction/increment of energy efficiency) are vague in the long term. So the benefits are possibly very weak while the costs could grow astronomically. We could bankrupt ourselves into abject poverty in the future in an effort to preserve growth in our future living standards.

The IEA report clearly states, “in the baseline scenario, the combined impact of both structural and efficiency effects leads to a reduction in final energy intensity of 1.7% per year.”

If you’d like to know exactly what changes occur year by year in terms of technology and structural change — ask the IEA.

I believe that the energy economists at IEA know how to do a baseline. You apparently don’t. Fine. Time for you to argue with them.

But I’ve said I don’t agree with all their assumptions. They are wrong about fuel cells. That’s one reason their costs are too high — duh!

And they have a very odd definition of breakthrough, as I will show.

Finally, they don’t have “15 GtC of built-in wedges.” They assume a continuation of historical trends that we’ve seen since 1973 — as they explain in great detail. Those trends occurred without climate policies. And given that oil prices are in fact now DOUBLE what IEA modeled, I’m thinking they are probably being the conservative by modeling “a reduction in final energy intensity of 1.7% per year.”

But good luck in your efforts to get more details out of them. Perhaps they have detailed spreadsheets they will share with you!

I’m thinking that if history offers any guidance, the actual performance will slowly but surely evolve to the case for which 90% of the projected outcome will need to be met in the last 10 % of the time.

And the actual real-world right-now rate at which any of those are being implemented is?

Have the final designs of any Generation III+ nuclear plant been reached?

Do you have any data from the past relative to the rates at which technologies have made market penetration? Especially retro-fitting existing homes with upgraded technologies.

“Huge amounts” is kind of difficult to do arithmetic with.

I think one rule-of-thumb that have have seen over the years is as follows. It requires about 50 years for an existing technology to be replaced by one that provides existing capabilities plus some additional benefits. One that simply replaces an older one and having no additional directly-tangible benefits requires much longer time scales. What has been the rate at which high-efficiency heating and cooling systems are retro-fitted into existing buildings? Or, even new construction?

Consider water power being displaced by steam being displaced by electricity. And wood displaced by coal/fossil being displaced by fission. The last one is a most excellent data point, as significant market penetration has yet to be attained, even after 50+ years. And it is being counted on to provide very significant displacement of fossil fuels, in less than 50 more years.

Thanks.

You continue to show that you do not understand the meaning of a BASELINE scenario. The numbers that are provided in the report (or by you) do not add up to reductions of 53 GtCO2. Consider:

*Solar makes almost no contribution to the BASELINE (p. 367) [Once again by including solar in the BASELINE you confuse the BASELINE and MITIGATION scenarios]

*Wind contributes 2% to the BASELINE (p. 343), and thus cannot by definition provide a large contribution to reductions implicit in the BASELINE

*Nuclear increases by very little (1 TW/yr) (p. 284), and similarly cannot produce a large contribution to EI declines

*Assumed decreases in fuel use are exactly the problem — they are just convenient assumptions, how will they occur separately from the ? (p. 428) How will vehicle miles traveled be limited to a tripling as the global economy increases by a factor of 4? Such assumptions are convenient, but they influence the conclusions in significant degree.

You have provided maybe 3-4 GtCO2 (1+ wedge) worth of reductions in your list above, even including the unsupported assumptions. Is that enough? No, it is not. You need about 10-12 more wedges.

When we are talking about the accuracy of a $45T price tag is it a waste of time to see if it is an accurate estimate?

It is amazing that you endorse the results of a report that (a) calls for a range of technological breakthroughs requiring massive new investments in RD&D, (b) requires 90% penetration of fuel cell vehicles (for its $200/ton marginal cost estimate), (c) has 15 GtC of built-in wedges (but not explanation for the majority of these).

Did you bother to even read the report? It has VERY detailed technology timelines as to what is in the baseline and what isn’t.

Here are a few examples from the report. This is all in the baseline (please note this isn’t everything — I do have useful things to do other than reading the report for you).

* 160 GW of Generation III+ nuclear plants by 2050.
* 400 GW of wind
* Huge amounts of efficiency in electricity and buildings (since “technologies already commercial”) — “improved thermal performance of new and existing dwellings,” “appliance efficiency improvements”
* Improvements in heat pump technology that increase energy efficiency and carbon footprint by 5%.
* 650 GW of solar space and water heating
* Huge amounts of efficiency in transportation — 10% to 25% lower fuel use in 2050 from LDV fuel economy improvements. 5-15% market share of hybrids in 2050
* 1000 Mtoe of 2nd generation biofuels

I think that is enough, don’t you?

I can see why you’d like to gloss over this point.

You write, “In the baseline, energy intensity improves because there is some efficiency from better technology and also some saturation of residential energy demand.”

Can you humor me my explaining what ‘better technologies’ you are referring to that are not already used in the mitigation scenarios that result in an energy intensity reduction of 1.8% per year for 45 years? Put another way, I need 15 wedges worth of emissions reductions to even get to the BASELINE. Or are they just going to occur automatically?

You have misread the report. In the baseline, energy intensity improves because there is some efficiency from better technology and also some saturation of residential energy demand. The non-baseline scenarios have a lot more efficiency penetration occurring a lot faster in them.

See for instance the “Baseline scenario results by sector and region” pages 528 to 534. ON page 530, the report clearly states, “in the baseline scenario, energy consumption in the building sector grew by 1% per year in the OECD countries between 2005 and 2050. This is slower than the growth in floor areas in both the service and residential sectors, implying a continuing improvement in the energy intensity of energy consumption in the sector due to a mix of structural and efficiency effects.

On page 532, the report notes that China already has efficiency standards and that sales of some large appliances “are experiencing slower growth as they reach saturation levels. Appliance efficiency improvements are expected to offset part of the impact of rising claims ownership on residential electricity demand.”

And since you didn’t dispute my point on oil prices, I’ll also take that as an agreement on that point.

Let me note that the report rather absurdly assumes “the oil price has been capped at USD 65/bbl for the period 2030 to 2050″!!!! Indeed, they seem to think the price in the baseline will be flat at under $65 a barrel until 2030. Apparently the authors of this report didn’t read the other recent IEA reports on oil I have blogged on. Absent any strong climate policies, oil prices will be much higher — I will come back to this point in a later post.

So I think we can move beyond this particularly quibble.

Your example highlights the problem –

The IEA report already allocates compact fluorescent lighting to achieving the BLUE scenario from the BASELINE. I am talking about achievement of the BASELINE.

You can’t use CFLs for both, that would be double counting, which is exactly the problem with the spontaneous improvements that we have discussed.

Please give me an action to achieve the baseline NOT assumed in achieving the difference between the BASELINE and BLUE scenarios.

Easy to do. Again, Roger, we’ve been through this. Energy intensity has historically improved without climate policy. What is wrong or dangerous about anybody assuming that will continue.

Frozen technology is not a rational base case since technology is not frozen. So let’s take two examples. First, compact fluorescent light bulbs. They haven’t reached full market penetration yet. You want to assume they never will do so on their own absent climate policies. I think that makes no sense.

Second, energy intensity gains have historically been HIGHER than assumed by IEA in their base case during times of high energy prices. Well, energy prices have gotten unbelievably high in the last two years, and we are already seeing a first every year over year decline in U.S. VMT.

Can we expect that high oil prices will spontaneously lead people to purchase more hybrids, small cars and diesels? Of course. No climate policy needed.

Indeed, the best way to see the expected impact of this is to look at the U.S. EIA’s change in energy demand forecast from last year’s annual energy Outlook to this year’s, which just came out.

They dropped their annual projection of electricity demand growth from 1.8% per year through 2030 to 1.1% per year! And they are still assuming oil prices in 2030 considerably lower than they already are now!