“Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522001756

by julosflb • 4 years ago

111 76 4 years ago

nosianu• 4 years ago

Here is a pretty good Guardian article about the study, where I found this a few days ago: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/...

The study is linked at around the middle of the article.

It has a few supporting articles at the bottom under "More on this story", for example one headlined "Climate chaos certain if oil and gas mega-projects go ahead, warns IEA chief"

paganel• 4 years ago

Of course that the West would label everything as a "carbon bomb" right now, i.e. everything that doesn't fit its socio-political biases. Labelling nuclear power-plants the same would be met with derision, even though in our day and age the price of energy and the price of "stuff" is pretty well correlated, and seeing as nuclear power-plants are pretty damn expensive then it means that's lots and lots of energy that has been "incorporated" into them. But because there's no black smoke getting out of those nuclear power-plants then it means it's all "in our heads" or something. The same goes for most of the subsidised "green" energy.

NoraCodes• 4 years ago

...is the argument you're making here that somehow a nuclear plant or solar farm is somehow equally polluting as a coal-fired power plant? Everything costs time, materials, and money to produce, but only coal plants continue to actively pollute after construction...

shadowgovt3• 4 years ago

And regarding the type of pollution created, more radioactive material has been released into the atmosphere from the world's fleet of coal plants than the world's fleet of nuclear plants. That includes the two with significant containment breaching meltdowns.

It turns out, when you burn a bunch of rocks, You release as gas all the stuff in those rocks.

montalbano• 4 years ago

If I understand correctly, what you're describing is often called 'embodied carbon' or 'embedded emissions' [0].

Many people spend their lives estimating embedded emissions and, more importantly, the time it will take for any emission-reducing technology (e.g. electric cars) to amortise away the CO2e emissions required to produce it.

For instance, it's been estimated that a Tesla Model 3 "needs to be driven for 13,500 miles (21,725 km) before it does less harm to the environment than a Toyota Corolla" [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_emissions [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lifeti...

ben_w6• 4 years ago

it's been estimated that a Tesla Model 3 "needs to be driven for 13,500 miles (21,725 km) before it does less harm to the environment than a Toyota Corolla"

Huh, that’s a factor of 5-10 less miles than I was expecting. Good to know.

fny2• 4 years ago

I hate to say it, but if energy prices keep rising this perspective is going to be disposed of rapidly.

High energy prices mean rampant inflation and social unrest. With crude and natural gas prices skyrocketing, developing nations will again turn to coal as an energy source. Developed nations will return (see Germany) to coal as a heating source.

Green energy will be thrown to the wayside for the sake of social stability give the tumult we've observed to this point.

For the short run, there is unfortunately no viable alternative without enduring 5-10 years of pain. Over the long run, I hope we get more nuclear reactors online.

Retric• 4 years ago

Why would you spend more money on coal than you can spend on other options?

Power companies aren’t building Wind/PV because it’s green they are building it because it’s cheap. Yes, higher inflation means higher interest rates, but it also means higher payments from customers over time.

shadowgovt3• 4 years ago

It's cheap and it's liberating. Once you go with solar or wind, you're actually harvesting the "fuel" at point of consumption, which completely changes your transportation story.

They still need a transportation grid for repair and replacement parts, but that need is worlds away from the need of a coal plant supplied with continuous burnable fuel, or a natural gas plant at the end of a pipe. Renewables are a more flexible technology for a world of more change.

matthewdgreen2• 4 years ago

You know what else causes social unrest? Starvation induced by crop failure. We’re already seeing the first signs with recent extreme weather and the megadrought. Wait just a short few years until it really gets moving.

downsidesabound• 4 years ago

That too will cause social unrest, indeed. But we won’t suffer social unrest today just to make tomorrow easier, however wise that might be. We’ll kick the can.

fny2• 4 years ago

Natural gas is an incredible important input in the development of fertilizers. This is part of the reason cereal prices have skyrocketed so far.

Unfortunately, everything is interlinked. Carbon is certainly an issue, but we've clearly put the cart before the horse.

brnt4• 4 years ago

Syria collapsed due to crop failure (3 or 4 years in a row). Thats a decade ago now.

ben_w6• 4 years ago

Why would the world turn to a more expensive fuel source?

Even in Germany, coal is more expensive than wind and mostly more expensive than PV: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-o...

barney54• 4 years ago

It is not valid to compare the levelized cost of non-dispatchable sources of generation like wind and solar and dispatachable sources of generation like coal and nuclear. It’s an apples to oranges comparison, unless you some storage costs to the wind and solar.

In that study you see there is overlap between coal and PV systems and batteries.

woodruffw3• 4 years ago

This might have been true 20 years ago, but the economic envelope has changed: solar and wind power are both consistently cheaper than fossil fuels. This holds true even in developing nations[1], which means that countries that are still building out their initial power generation and distribution systems stand to benefit from skipping a costly transition entirely (not to mention eliminating a geopolitical lever.)

[1] https://www.irena.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2021/Jun/Majori...

guerrilla3• 4 years ago

I think you missed the fact that what OP said is already happening and even the most highly invested in green (Scandinavia) isn't remotely close to keeping up with this.

offmycloud• 4 years ago

solar and wind power are both consistently cheaper than fossil fuels

Solar power is not cheaper than combined-cycle natural gas at midnight. The article that you cited does not contain the words "battery" or "storage", and one really needs to compare the all-in levelized cost of energy (and storage) over the life of the project. It does mention hydrogen, but does not go into the efficiency calculations.

fhedgshd• 4 years ago

I really hate this take because it ignores so much nuance. Yeah per kw.hr you make cheaper power with wind but guess what? Most population centers are far enough from windy and sunny areas that transmission is very expensive. Is not like utility companies and regulators are idiots in love with coal. Maybe they are but they like money more.

Guthur• 4 years ago

Solar and wind are strategically untenable. I can harden, concentrate and layer my defenses around dense energy production facilities. I can also concentrate my remedial assets to bring them back online asap.

With the solar in particular it's one cluster munition away from massive degradation.

tsimionescu8• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, solar and wind and even nuclear do almost nothing to alleviate the impact that oil price has on the price of goods.

BEVs are far from being ready to be a part of the goods distribution market, even by land - power/weight is still far too low. Electrical trains are useful, but building up new rail infrastructure has been neglected and takes a long time. Even if BEVs were viable, battery production is limited, and electrifying the transportation industry would directly compete with increasing renewables on the power grid and the need to expand storage capacity to do so. The price of batteries would sky-rocket and cause inflation this way.

Secondly, oil and other fossil fuels are used for their chemical properties in a large amount of industries - plastics and fertilizer being the most obvious. The cost of oil going up significantly directly impacts all of these industries. Some uses could be replaced with cheap power generation (e.g. H2 production through electrolysis instead of natural gas breakdown), but that requires a massive expansion of the power grid.

So even if we were able to keep power from the grid cheap through renewables, fossil fuel prices exploding would still rapidly increase inflation, probably to unacceptable levels.

Of course, that still doesn't mean we should drill more. The right answer, given the unprecedented threat of global warming, is neither to increase oil supply nor to hope that increasing renewable will be enough. The right answer is to decrease demand - stop producing many unnecessary goods and burying them in plastic then shipping them halfway across the world. Ration the existing oil supply to the highest impact industries, and let other industries replace it.

Don't allow industry to keep using expensive oil while shunting the price off on consumers.

hedora2• 4 years ago

Three of four home states for my extended family are under continuous threat of burnining down, and air quality has been unacceptably low (due to fires) for years. Also, at least one is running out of water, to the point that is has been causing food shortages elsewhere for years.

I honestly think the US will end up in a civil war if it ends up being necessary to force action on climate change.

As an aside, I own a pickup. I honestly don't give a shit if gas goes to $20. We already drive it as little as possible.

However, there's no reason that would have to happen. It would cost about a dollar per gallon of gasoline-equivalent for existing prototype atmospheric carbon capture technologies to start drawing down CO2.

That's much cheaper than societal collapse. Heck, it is less than Putin's war is costing US consumers.

The excuses need to end, and action needs to start ramping up.

0x53• 4 years ago

The book “American war” is an interesting fiction take on the idea of a civil war based on climate change policies

est31• 4 years ago

Rising energy prices are good for renewables, not bad. A rise makes renewable infrastructure more profitable just as it makes non-renewable infrastructure more profitable. Thus, renewables get even more competitive to non-renewable alternatives.

tsimionescu8• 4 years ago

While I agree with you that this is what will most likely happen, I don't think it's the only possible alternative.

The best solution to keep both short and long term in mind is to regulate prices on basic goods to prevent the worse social impacts, while allowing commodities to explode in price. This should greatly encoyrage all industries that can get rid of fossil fuels from their supply chains to do so, but also reduce overall consumption of unnecessary items and thus of fossil fuels. If the plastic toy you were importing from China suddenly costs 50$ instead of 5$, perhaps you simply won't buy it, so it won't get produced and wrapped in even more plastic and shipped halfway across the world.

skocznymroczny• 4 years ago

It won't be as easy to go back to coal for heating, at least short term. In Poland for example, one of the criteria to get a subsidy for switching away from coal for heating was to dispose of the old coal oven. I did that few months ago and switched to gas heating instead. If the prices of gas go up dramatically (and given the current situation that's likely), we don't really have an alternative at the moment.

hedora2• 4 years ago

Is there a web accessible way to query projects by state / district? I'd like to reach out to local politicians about any local carbon bombs.

hettygreen• 4 years ago

The actual map: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S03014215220017...

CodeWriter23• 4 years ago

Funny how all these studies completely ignore methane emissions from abandoned wells.

marcosdumay• 4 years ago

Everybody seems to willfully ignore every kind of methane leakage on the fossil fuels production chain.

But this one study is about projected growth, so old wells are really not the point.

qwertox• 4 years ago

I was interested in knowing the reason for Saudi Arabia's high emissions and found a site [0] which has information which could explain it a bit. Some information, like the one from Saudi Arabia, is relatively outdated (2018), but informative nonetheless.

[0] https://www.climate-transparency.org/countries/africa/saudi-...

“Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

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