Cost of Fighting Global Warming Could be $45 Trillion
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Energy, EnvironmentA new report by the International Energy Agency offers a basic roadmap to drastically cutting fossil fuel emissions by 2050.
The study said that an average of 35 coal-powered plants and 20 gas-powered power plants would have to be fitted with carbon capture and storage equipment each year between 2010 and 2050.
In addition, the world would have to construct 32 new nuclear power plants each year, and wind-power turbines would have to be increased by 17,000 units annually. Nations would have to achieve an eight-fold reduction in carbon intensity — the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of energy — in the transport sector.
Such action would drastically reduce oil demand to 27 percent of 2005 demand. Failure to act would lead to a doubling of energy demand and a 130 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, IEA officials said.
The estimated cost in today’s dollars? $45 trillion.
That’s not pennies. And building 32 new nuclear power plants a year for the next four decades would certainly run into opposition, both from environmentalists and those who do not want such a massive proliferation of nuclear technology.
But, increasingly, nuclear power is looking like the only immediately viable alternative to fossil fuels. Note that the report calls for 17,000 new wind turbines a year as well but that clearly won’t come close to meeting energy needs. To reduce carbon emissions and avoid nuclear power, we have to hope for a major technological breakthrough in alternative energy sources such as solar or bio-fuels. Based on this IEA report, we don’t have time to sit around and hope. We need to take action now.
Of course, on the surface, this hardly seems like a plan most of the world will adopt anytime soon. I think combating global warming will be done on a far more ad hoc basis.
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June 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Ray Kurzweil, author of “The Singularity is Near,” makes the observation that solar power currently constitutes about 1% of of the world’s energy needs, yet its capcity has been doubling every 2 years. Therefore, he predicts that 25 years from now we may be able to supplant all of our energy needs with solar.
If this is the case, and we are confident in that investment, then we should simply abandon all of this cap-and-trade legislation completely, and push our economy as fast as it can go with all of the petroleum available to us, in order to create as much capital we can in order to bring about this changeover as quickly as possible.
Not to mention that anthropogenic global warming is turning out to be a sham anyway (its June and its friggin cold out here in MA!).
We have barely scratched the surface of whats necessary to cut greenhouse gasses to these arbitrary standards assigned by partisan politicians and beurocrats. Yet, these relatively small policy changes have created food riots in Haiti, Pakistan, Indonesia ect, augmenting already crazy gas prices, and none of the CO2 reduction goals have been met by the any of the Kyoto states.
The costs of fighting global warming will far outweigh the damage that global warming may cause. Hopefully, our leaders will get the message soon enough.
June 6th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Jimmy, of course its colder in the more northern states, haven’t you watched the discovery channel? The northern part of the country will get colder as global warming occurs, due to shifting air currents and water currents, its around the equatorial belt and the tropics that things will get hotter, as a result these changes will lead to increased droughts in many of our food production regions, and an increase in the size of our deserts, therein lies the problem, the earth’s carrying capacity will drop as that occurs, and since our population is going towards 9-10 billion that will be a problem as food shortages increase
June 6th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
And when the entire northern hemisphere is covered in 50 feet of snow, will I be able to walk from Philadelphia to New York in less than 15 minutes while wearing snow-shoes, like Dennis Quaid did?
June 6th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Well, you have to remember that it is Dennis Quaid. He’s no mere mortal.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
lol Nah, that movie was a vast exaggeration, however there will be a cooling of the northern part of the hemisphere, not to the point as shown in the movie, but it will get colder
June 6th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Oops, I guess I was wrong. It was in the 50’s today, but tomorrow its going to get up around 90 and meteorologists in the greater Boston area predict an upcoming heat wave. Therefore global warming appears to be causing global warming again, rather than cooling. At least for the next 2 weeks.
June 6th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
[...] I’m hesitant about nuclear power, but I won’t dismiss it outright. Because as Alan has pointed out recently, wind and solar power just won’t do the trick, and if we’re serious about climate [...]
June 6th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
lol, Jimmy, the best way to determine weather changes and patterns are based on average temperatures, not on day to day changes which can be very volatile, but on ranges over the course of months, years, even decades, the problem with basing your beliefs on too few data points is your data can be skewed by small scale events like a pressure system
June 6th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I always love this tax the corporations concept. We know that is shorthand for tax the people. All costs are passed on.