Meantime, Back in the Real World: Power Plant Conversion Rates
May 28th, 2008Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
A reader writes in with positive things to say, but notes that as interesting as it is to see our focus on technical issues like the short-term predictive capability of models and the fidelity of IPCC pre/post/SRES scenarios we may also balance that out with some bigger picture stuff.
To that I say: guilty as charged, fair enough. I’ll be returning to the short-term prediction stuff before long, but for today’s big picture perspective, consider the following points on the scale of the mitigation challenge.
The Center for Global Development estimates that there are 25,339 power plants around the world that emit carbon dioxide. If the world starts replacing or converting these plants to carbon free energy production at the rate of one plant per day, then it will take 69 years to make all of these power plants carbon neutral, and an 80% conversion would take 56 years. If you’d like assume that most emissions come from the largest plants, you can cut those numbers in half or even by 2/3 and the point remains. At a conversion rate of one plant per week — using only the top 1/3 emitters — it would take 145 years to convert 80% of these 1/3 (162 years to convert the entire 1/3).
But energy production from fossil fuel power plants is of course increasing, so these are conservative numbers. The rate of conversion from carbon dioixde emitting power plants currently is negative (they are growing in number, at a rate of, what, several per week? Good data sources appreciated in the comments), so the conversion clock is running in reverse. And, oh yeah, power plant emissions according to CGD are 29% of the global total.
The point of this post is not that mitigation is impossible, but that it arguably is much, much harder a challenge than typically advertised. Any guesses on when the power plant conversion rate will become positive, and a what rate it will occur? Will it occur at all?
May 28th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
If we’re back in the real world, should we not decide how important (vs. expensive) it is to eliminate emission of the product of the exothermic reaction?
Don’t forget, the urgency of the situation has evaporated as temps are cooling so far this century.
Research of this scale always has unexpected benefits. Maybe any new taxes should be dedicated to increasing the power of the hardware so climate scientists can decrease parameterizations, rather than (as politicians are undoubtedly scheming) just going into some general fund; or as brokers are scheming, going into some trading scam.
May 29th, 2008 at 1:27 am
I noticed many mitigation optimists tend to assume that we can replace a significant portion of the transportation sector with electric vehicles. What seems to be forgotten is the need to rapidly expand the supply of eletricity in order to support the increased load.
In other words, can’t simply replace the existing capacity. We need to double it while we are replacing it.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:51 am
The CARMA database looks cool. Some of the figures suggest that the situation may not be as bad as it appears from absolute numbers of plants. It would appear that the largest plants (presumably gigawatt scale) represent only a small fraction of the numbers. That would be consistent with the distribution of plants in the US and the fact that the ~50,000 plants in the database represent 3700 GW global generating capacity (according to EIA, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/ieoecg.html ) – about 75 MW each (not big). The ~25k fossil plants average 100 MW. You’d have to cut the numbers by more than 4/5 to yield the big ones.
If you could replace 1 big (1 GW) plant per day, the conversion would take only 7 years. Of course, that’s a thousand big wind turbines a day (more if you account for generation instead of capacity). For comparison, the US made 200 combat aircraft per day in 1944, and the global auto industry makes 170,000 cars and light trucks per day, so the job is far from impossible.
I find it easier to look at it in $. The 2500 GW of global fossil generating capacity represents a $2.5 trillion asset at $1/watt. With a plant life of 40 years, its natural turnover rate is $60 billion/year – peanuts – and similar to the annual increment added to grow capacity.
The challenge comes if new plants are, say, $5/watt. However, if electric rates reflected those kinds of marginal costs, you’d expect to see a lot of conservation in the long run, and suddenly the task would be much smaller.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:23 am
“If the world starts replacing or converting these plants to carbon free energy production at the rate of one plant per day, then it will take 69 years to make all of these power plants carbon neutral, and an 80% conversion would take 56 years. If you’d like assume that most emissions come from the largest plants, you can cut those numbers in half or even by 2/3 and the point remains. At a conversion rate of one plant per week — using only the top 1/3 emitters — it would take 145 years to convert 80% of these 1/3 (162 years to convert the entire 1/3).”
Such an analysis is not the correct way of looking at the matter.
You write that it would take “162 years to convert the entire 1/3″…but what power plants do you know of that are 162+ years old?
Power plants don’t get replaced at a particular rate because someone says, “We should replace one plant per day.” They get replaced because they are no longer economically competitive…whatever the reason.
So the rate of replacement might be 1 per day, or 5 per day, or 10 per day, or more.
“Any guesses on when the power plant conversion rate will become positive, and a what rate it will occur?”
This is also not the correct way to look at the problem. Existing power plants will not necessary get converted to “carbon-free energy production.”
The proper questions are, “Will they get converted to lower-CO2-emitting technologies?” And, “Will the total CO2 emissions from power plants worldwide go down?”
The answer to that first question is that new plants will almost certainly be lower-CO2-emitting than the plants they replace.
But the answer to that second question is much more difficult, since worldwide electricity production can be expected to rise for the forseeable future, particularly in China, India, and other rapidly developing countries.
So perhaps that second question would be answered that CO2 emissions from power plants in developed countries (e.g. U.S. and OECD Europe) will probably reach a peak and head downward in the next decade or so, if they haven’t already. Whereas CO2 emissions from power plants in developing countries can be expected to continue upward at least for the next 20-30+ years.
“Will it occur at all?”
Do you mean, “In the year 2100 or 2200, will there still be fossil-fueled power plants?” It seems very unlikely to me.