2002: Alternative Energy Scenario: The Quandary: An Imaginary Situation Defines a Research Education Objective

Team Members: Crissaris Sarnelli, Tanya Martinez, Emily Gibble, Anna Ruvinsky, Lydie Louis, Leila Woolley, Umit Kenis, Jane Zeng, Jim Hansen, Colin Price, Lionel Pandolfo

The Quandary

The Secretary of State is caught between a rock and a hard place. As the leader of the Department of State, he must deal with countries around the world, and these countries are all calling for the United States to stop the growth of its emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal gas that stands accused of bringing on dreaded Global Warming.

At the same time, the Secretary of State realizes that the Department of Energy has a different perspective. Their job is to assure that the United States has a supply of affordable energy sufficient to drive a healthy growing economy. All parties, the President and his Cabinet, agree that a thriving economy is essential for achieving the technology development and the resources required to eventually stabilize atmospheric composition and solve the Global Warming problem.

It is also realized that the long-term solution of Global Warming will require many decades. Carbon dioxide is produced by burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), these fuels power our economy, and the lifetime of energy systems (the "infrastructure") is typically several decades. The best strategy for dealing with Global Warming will need to be devised in concert with continuing technological developments and continuing improvements in our understanding of the science of climate change.

The quandary arises with regard to immediate actions, i.e., actions that can be taken to influence the growth of carbon dioxide in the next 10 years. Recent research has shown that if the growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions could be stabilized, i.e., if use of fossil fuels remains approximately constant, the climate change in the next several decades should be moderate -- continued global warming would be expected, but the danger of disastrous climate change would be reduced. Such a leveling out of carbon dioxide emission rates would provide time to develop improved technologies and an economically sound strategy for eventual reduction in carbon dioxide emission rates and long-term stabilization of global climate.

Specifically, the Secretary of State is troubled because the Department of Energy has advised the President that the United States cannot stabilize its carbon dioxide emissions this decade. They argue that, even with improved energy efficiencies, carbon dioxide emissions will need to increase about 15% in the next 10 years to provide healthy economic growth.

The Secretary realizes that if he travels about the world with this energy plan he will be severely beaten about the head and shoulders, at least in a figurative sense, in many countries that he visits. He is especially troubled, because he has come to realize that the climate change issue has at least some degree of validity, and with this energy plan the United States will be aggravating future climate problems for the young generation.

Furthermore, the Secretary is bothered by the nagging feeling that there is something about the Department of Energy analysis that just doesn't make sense. He is aware that the growth rate of energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in the United States in the past three decades has been moderate, only about 1% per year, as opposed to a rate of 4% per year in the preceding century. He is also aware that the President is calling for aggressive actions to improve energy efficiency and develop renewable energy sources. Yet the Department of Energy is suggesting continued increase in energy use and carbon dioxide emissions, with a growth rate at least as large as in recent decades. It seems a bit fishy.

The Secretary's quandary arises because he realizes that the President must rely on his Department of Energy for projecting energy requirements, and the Secretary is a consummate team player. What can he do? His first thought is to doodle with the Energy Department numbers himself, and try to figure out if there is something wrong with them. After all, like Benjamin Franklin, the Secretary is a bit of an amateur scientist (well, not quite like Benjamin Franklin). However, he soon realizes that this is impossible. He is dealing almost 24 hours a day with crises in the Middle East and around the world, including the war on terrorism.

Suddenly, the idea hits him -- he must call on the A team. He and the President are both committed to young people and to their education. And who better to investigate this problem then just the people who will inherit the consequences of whatever plan is carried out?

,p> The A-team enters. They look rag-tag -- some bleary-eyed students, a couple of energetic teachers, a wizened professor -- but the Secretary is not fooled by appearance. He understands their approach -- they give primacy to real data. Doodlings and models of what might happen in the future may stimulate one's thoughts, but a convincing analysis must start with and place most weight on data and observations from the real world.

Their job, the Secretary explains, is to provide a hard-nosed analysis, one that can be taken to the President to help him. The President is continually besieged by environmental advocates, who see a problem behind every bush -- they would shut down industry if they could. And he is besieged by energy advocates, who argue that we must give priority to having more and more energy -- climate change may be an imaginary problem, they say, let future generations worry about it. The President's job is tough -- he needs some objective scientific help.

The Secretary can only provide the A team with one graph. "One good graph is worth a million words", the Secretary says. This graph (Figure 1) defines the enigma. Perhaps, he says, it can also help the A team define their analysis of the problem.

The graph contrasts two energy paths for the United States that were proposed in the mid 1970s. The Department of Energy, as is their wont, projected the need for strong energy growth rates. They said that the United States energy consumption of about 70 quadrillion BTU/year in 1975 would need to increase to about 200 quadrillion BTU/year forty years later, a growth rate of about 3% per year. If such an energy growth rate occurred, with the energy provided by fossil fuels, it would yield the famous and dramatic climate change, the dreaded "business-as-usual" climate scenario.

An extreme alternative to the Energy Department scenario was provided by Amory Lovins. Amory is an idealist and a dreamer, appropriately decorated as a boy-genius, a bit like Einstein (well, sort of). In his scenario, by means of great improvements in energy efficiency, the energy use in the United States grows only slightly and then begins to decline. In addition, more and more of that energy is produced by "soft technologies", which do not include nuclear power or big hydroelectric plants, energy sources that are also banes of some environmentalists.

So, in Lovins' scenario carbon dioxide emissions (from coal, oil and gas) decline steadily and dramatically, almost disappearing by 2025. (This contrasts with the "alternative scenario", which the A team studied last year. In the "alternative scenario" carbon dioxide emissions are flat in the early part of the 21st century, but begin to decline before mid-century.)

Real world data, for energy use in the United States (heavy black curve in Figure 1), shows that Lovins was half right. Energy use in the United States has grown only slowly, about 1% per year, since 1975. However, renewable energy sources, such as solar power and wind power are still so small in the United States that they barely show up in the graph.

The real world data also show that Lovins was half wrong, at least so far. Lovins imagined that renewable energy could by now be so attractive as to begin to drive out fossil fuels -- renewables would even replace nuclear power and big hydroelectric plants. Before dismissing Lovins as a dreamer, remember that Edison and Smortelheimer were once laughed at too (Smortelheimer turned out to be a real nut -- he died in Bellvue -- so, you see, it is hard to say). Perhaps Lovins was just ahead of time by a few decades.

The real world, at least in the recent past and probably in the future, lies somewhere between the Energy Department and Lovins extremes. However, where the real world will be within that range is the crucial issue. If it is possible to flatten out United States carbon dioxide emissions, i.e., achieve zero percent annual growth rather than the 1.5% per year estimated by the Department of Energy, the climate problem appears to be tractable*.

[*This presumes, in addition, that (1) other developed countries make a serious attempt to follow the path of the watered-down Kyoto Protocol, and (2) developed and developing countries make concerted efforts to reduce air pollution and non-CO₂ climate forcings. Such actions make practical sense for other reasons, especially for the sake of human health, but their effective implementation requires technology development and international cooperation.]

The A teams' approach. The A-team must develop a concrete plan of investigation. It should start with a realistic projection of the growth rate of energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in the absence of aggressive actions to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions. Then they will consider a variety of aggressive actions, along the lines proposed by the President, to see how much each of these actions could reduce the growth rates of energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. Their job is not to suggest policy, but rather to show quantitatively how much would be gained by each potential action. The Secretary of State can then take this list of potential actions to the President for his consideration. If they do their job well, they may save the planet. No mean accomplishment for a bunch of high schoolers.

The first task, choosing a realistic scenario for the growth of energy needs in the absence of new aggressive actions, is deceptively simple. The wizened professor notes that the history of many decades shows that some business-as-usual includes a steady improvement in productivity and energy efficiency. Thus a 3%/year growth of the economy does not require a 3% annual growth of energy use. The required growth will be larger in electrical energy than in other forms of energy, because the trend toward more and more of our energy being electrical is expected to continue (this is a good thing, by the way, because electrical energy is clean, and it is easier to eliminate air pollutants from power stations than from many distributed sources). Thus the professor suggests that they take as their base energy growth rates 2%/year for electricity and 1%/year for other energy. These are generous growth rates that would be sufficient to power a vigorous expanding economy, at least as thriving as that of the 1990s.

How is the A team going to attack this problem quantitatively? First they must obtain data on current energy use in the United States, electrical and non-electrical, and the proportion of each that is provided by coal, oil and gas. They must divide the energy use into appropriate sectors (e.g., electrical can be further divided into consumers and commercial, and into lighting, heating etc.; transportation, further divided into automobiles, trucks, etc.).

It is only essential to define those sectors where there are potential energy savings over and above business-as-usual, and which would seem feasible within the President's plan for aggressive actions. For example, if the miles-per-gallon for the fleet average of automobiles is improved by such-and-such over the next decade, what will be the impact (remember that it only affects new cars, which must be phased in, and miles driven per car may increase).

Feasible energy savings thus delineated may help reduce the energy growth rates, but the A team realizes that it is unlikely that they can find enough efficiencies to allow energy use to flatten out in the next decade. However, there are two other factors that they must also investigate: increased use of renewable energy and fuel switching. These actions would reduce carbon dioxide emissions without reducing energy use.

The President has proposed support for increases in energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind power. Their likely growth can probably be estimated best by looking at recent growth, the experience in other countries where significant efforts have been made, and the nature of the current plans and legislation in the United States.

Finally, the A team must consider the possible effects of fuel switching. These can work either way. For example, it there is a decrease in hydropower or nuclear power, this will result in increased demand for fossil fuels. The A team must determine from current trends and discussions what the prospects are for increased (or decreased) power from hydroelectric and nuclear sources. There is also the possibility of switching among the fossil fuels, for example, some aging coal plants might be replaced by natural gas power plants.

In all cases the role of the A team is not to recommend policy, but rather to provide quantitative information about alternatives. Their special interest is to determine whether there are realistic energy policy alternatives that would yield a zero growth rate in fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions, as required for the "alternative scenario" that yields only moderate climate change in the next 50 years.

Research Tasks

We must make a quantitative analysis of all the major options for reducing CO₂ emissions. Our job is not to select from among these, only to provide information to decision makers. We will look at 15 options: 5 renewable energies, 5 energy efficiency options, and 5 other technologies. We will break into five two-person groups, and each group will investigate one renewable energy, one energy efficiency improvement, and one other option.

Following is a strawman for the 15 tasks. These can be blocked out from Sam's table. We need to make a cleaned-up more informative version of Sam's table. This will help illustrate that the tasks we have chosen are quite comprehensive. If these options fail to yield any realistic path consistent with the "alternative scenario", then the next task of the A-Team (next summer) will be to search for another planet to live on.

• Renewable Energy: solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydroelectric.
• Energy Efficiency: transportation (cars and trucks), coal power plants (electrical energy generation), end use efficiency of electricity use (residential, commercial + government, industrial).
• Other Technology: sequestration of CO₂, transportation reform (increased rail), nuclear power, fuel switching (coal + gas), hydrogen (allows more renewables)

The base case energy growth rate is assumed to be 2%/yr for electricity and 1%/yr other.

We must look 10 years and 20 years into the future (2012 and 2022).

For each of the 15 items, the 2-person team will define 3 scenarios: 1) laissez faire (a.k.a. BAU), 2) conservative action, 3) strong activism. Laissez faire is true "business-as-usual"; it includes energy efficiency improvements that industry and consumers would pursue without any special new efforts to encourage that. [We use the terminology "laissez faire" because "business-as-usual" has been corrupted by using it for unrealistic 4%/year growth of CO₂ emissions.] "Conservative actions" includes new actions that make practical sense and don't cost much money, e.g., removing barriers to efficiency, adjusting policies to encourage and reward efficiency and innovation. "Strong activism" includes special government efforts to develop, or encourage development of, new technologies and/or mandated energy reforms. It is not anticipated that policy makers would pursue all of the strong actions, but they may like to know the potential of each, in case they wish to pursue any of them.

As an example, let's consider roughly what laissez faire, conservative actions, and strong activism might correspond to, for the case of nuclear power. Laissez faire might be: no new plant construction, a few closings, a slow decline in nuclear energy delivery. Conservative actions may include solution of waste disposal problem, a few expansions in operations, somewhat better energy production trends than in recent years, (3) strong activism would include a few test new technology nuclear power plants within 10 years, and a large number in 20 years. This is just a straw man. Your first job is to define, qualitatively, what actions would correspond to each of these three categories (laissez faire, conservative actions, strong activism). Then you must quantify what is the implication for energy production and CO₂ emissions in 2012 and 2022 in each of the three cases.

You must be able to defend and articulate your choices and the quantitative results. Thus you must research the problem well enough to define what is plausible. After you have taken a first cut at this you will present your preliminary analysis to a sister team for critique (sanity check), and you will similarly criticize their first effort. Later, after you have revised and improved your results, you will present them to the entire A-team for critique. After further refinements, you will prepare a poster and brief oral presentation for the ICP final conference. If you do a good job, and things work out well, we can use the results to prepare a scientific paper soon thereafter.

The above 15 tasks will provide the fodder for producing some interesting summary conclusions. In other words, once we have the analyses for all 15 items, we can combine them in some interesting ways. Specifically, let us use them to produce the following estimates:

• Energy and CO₂ future paths if we follow "Laissez Faire" for all three categories (Efficiency, Renewables, Technology). How do these compare with IPCC "business as usual" and with the "alternative scenario"?
• Energy and CO₂ future paths if we follow "Conservative Action" for (a) Efficiency, (b) Renewables, (c) Technology, (d) all three of these. How do these scenarios compare with BAU and AS?
• Energy and CO₂ paths if we follow "Strong Activism" for (a) Efficiency, (b) Renewables, (c) Technology. What if we follow "Strong Activism" for the single most effective item in each of these three categories? Discuss the reasons why policy makers may or may not wish to choose "winners" from these options, and what research they might consider to reduce uncertainties and encourage progress without picking winners.

Fundamentally, the problem for the whole A-team is to learn enough about each of the 15 "items" so that you can make rationale evaluations of what is possible (for energy use and CO₂ emissions) with three different levels of effort. You will need to be able to explain how you reached your conclusion and defend it against criticisms. This requires that you research your topic and make realistic assessments. It is preferable that you provide references for different perspectives, provide a clear rationale for your choices, and include caveats as to why you may be wrong.

Specific Products

Attached is a draft of what is referred to above as the "cleaned-up more informative table", or simply the basic A-team table. Numbers should be put in this table using data for year 2000. [If the data source does not allow division of electricity and other fossil fuel combustion into the three indicated subcategories (residential, commercial + government, industrial), we may have to alter the choice of subcategories.] [Looking at the documents "Annual Energy Outlook 2002" and "Annual Energy Review 2000", I see that they use the categories "residential", "commercial" and "industrial", so we should adapt those. Probably "government" is lumped in with "commercial". Those are our two primary sources of data. I notice that AER 2000 was published in August 2001, so perhaps AER 2001 will soon be available. That would be nice so that we have 2000 data. If it's not available, we should probably revise the numbers before we consider possible publication. Therefore it is good to have the tables computerized so that it is easy to insert revisions.]

The primary quantitative tasks will be to fill in the numbers for three copies of the A-team table for 2012 and three copies for 2022 (or 2024). The three copies are for "laissez faire", "conservative actions" and "strong activism" scenarios. These tables will then be used to make graphs as implied above.

Science Understandings

What is the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere now?

Compare today's concentration of CO₂ with the concentrate of CO₂ in one hundred and one thousand years age, what are the change rates?

What causes the change?

How does the concentration of CO₂ change in the atmosphere?

How do we calculate the annual CO₂ emission?

Where does the CO₂ emission come from?

Scientific Concepts

Carbon cycle, the history of the atmosphere since the Earth formed, transfer of energy, greenhouse effect, Earth's energy supply, renewable energy, energy efficiency, nuclear energy

Technical and Mathematical Skills

Use the data from research to make the change of CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere in Earth's history

Make tables that show the source of CO₂ emission and the possible ways of reducing CO₂ emission

Calculate the annual volume of CO₂ emission in US and the percentage of reducing of CO₂ emission.

Explain the advantages and disadvantages for the specific topic

Use different computer programs, such as word and excel to write their reports and make graphs; use PowerPoint to do a presentation and show their research work logically; use the Internet to get information.

Collect data from different kinds of sources such as books, magazines, articles, and the Internet and organize the data in a table. Conduct a literature review. Students also need to use these tables to make different kinds of graphs to support their opinions.

Other Skills and Understandings

Students can demonstrate conceptual understanding by using scientific concepts to explain observations and make predictions.

Students can present the concepts in multiple ways: words, diagrams, graphs, tables, and technologies.

Students demonstrate scientific inquiry and problem solving by using thoughtful questioning, reasoning strategies, and common sense.