After Gutenberg

The Markey-Waxman bill to establish an “American Clean Energy and Security Act” is the latest effort by the Demorats to implement some sort of economic disincentive for carbon emissions.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important anthropogenic GHG; and, such anthropogenic emissions unequivocally contribute to climate change. The rise of CO2 corresponds to the rise in global temperature and loss of arctic ice mass. Annual carbon emissions grew by about 80% between 1970 and 2004. Coal-fired electric power plants comprise the single biggest source of CO2 emissions in the world. By and large, such admonishments are being ignored by U.S. policy-makers.

This blog has given plenty of reasons why reducing carbon emissions is so essential to the mitigation of climate change. The following information via World Changing illustrates why economic disincentives are advocated.

Shakeb Afsah, of Climate Data Due Diligence, provides an explanation why, even though total CO2 emissions from the US electric power sector have dropped during the recession, the emissions intensity of the US power supply — that is, the amount of carbon per megawatt hour produced — actually inched upwards.

“Carbon intensity at the end of last year moved roughly in tandem with the share of US electricity that came from coal.”

Afsah suggests that coal remained much cheaper than natural gas last year, so when electricity demand declined, power producers turned down the gas more than they ramped down coal.

Using one individual coal plant as an example, we see that CO2 emissions per megawatt-hour inched up when the plant was run at 50 percent capacity.

Such results suggest that it would be better to shut one coal plant down entirely, rather than turning several plants down a bit. Here’s hoping that the plants to be shut down first are those that are the greatest polluters.

The reality might be more complicated, and the economics hard to figure out, but it could be worth figuring out if this problem applies to the western grid as well as to the Amos power plant, which is in West Virginia.

So in short, the Climate Data Due Diligence charts suggest that the culprit in the increase in emissions intensity is coal:  we’re using way too much of it, even in a recession, and using it less efficiently than we should.  So until we start to wring dirty coal plants out of the electricity supply, we’re going to be stuck with CO2 emissions far higher than we need them to be.