Jeff Peischl/CIRES and NOAA
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
As public realisation grows that renewables are not delivering results, oil companies are confidently pushing for policy makers to recognise gas as a permanent part of the solution to climate change, rather than viewing gas as a “transition fuel”.
Big Oil Pushes Gas as Fossil Fuel Answer to Global Warming
By Kevin Crowley , Rachel Adams-Heard , and Naureen S Malik
29 June 2018, 09:00 GMT+10 Updated on 30 June 2018, 07:59 GMT+10To reduce emissions and provide affordable electricity, the world needs to burn more fossil fuels, not less.
That’s the message being delivered by the world’s biggest energy companies at the World Gas Conference in Washington this week, where they championed natural gas as the fuel of the future, rather than one that simply bridges the gap toward renewables.
The world is facing the twin challenge of growing power supply — which Royal Dutch Shell Plc says needs to increase five times over the next 50 years — and reducing emissions to meet climate change targets. Energy companies see gas doing double duty: it has half the carbon emissions of coal when used in power generation, is abundant and relatively cheap.
The “big challenge for us in the industry is helping people recognize gas as a destination fuel, not just a transition fuel,” BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley said during a panel discussion. “There’s another camp, a surprising camp, that is intent on discrediting gas as an option.”
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Pushed by consumers, governments and some shareholders, big energy companies, especially those in Europe, have been investing in renewables. BP said Thursday it plans to acquire the U.K.’s largest electric vehicle charging company, while Shell and Total have bought utilities. Norway’s Equinor ASA links employee pay to cleaner energy production from the executive level down, among other metrics.
While Equinor will “remain an oil and gas company for the foreseeable future,” the company is “always pursuing new and tougher emissions targets” alongside profitability, Tor Martin Anfinnsen, executive vice president for marketing, midstream and processing, said in an interview.
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Pushing gas is potentially a clever strategy, especially in places like Europe or green US states, where politicians are facing the growing nightmare of unwinding their renewable policy mistakes. As recently as February this year BP were talking up their plans to invest more in renewables, so pushing for policymakers to consider transition to gas as part of a permanent climate target rather than aiming for a 100% renewable climate target seems quite a shift in direction.
Update (EW): the oil companies aren’t (yet) pushing for the complete elimination of renewables, updated the post to make this clear
Okay My latest lightbulb. According to the DOE graph on the carbon cycle which is on the Wikipedia website, the atmosphere has 800 Gigatons(Gt) of carbon. To get the amount of CO2 you multiply by 3.67. But for sake of convenience we will talk in terms of ppm since everybody knows that the atmosphere has 410 ppm by volume of CO2. That means roughly 1ppm CO2 = 2Gt of carbon
Since NOAA doesnt seem to have an up to date graph of the carbon cycle here is NASA’s.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/
You will see that they copied the one from WIKI which came from DOE.
Humans are emitting 8 Gt per year by burning fossil fuels and 1 Gt per year by land use changes.
So you see that humans put 9Gt/2 =4.5 ppm into the atmosphere but the atmosphere increases only 2ppm per year. The atmosphere changes 45ppm with the oceans every year. The atmosphere also exchanges 60ppm each year with the soil via microbial respiration and decomposition and plant respiration with the opposite effect of photosynthesis. So in total, 105ppm is exchanged by nature and man adds 4.5ppm. So man’s contribution of total exchange is 4.1% and nature’s is 95.9% which is 23.4 times what ma’s contribution is.
To give you an example of why you should not never read the web site Skepticalscience.com They had an explanation of this whole concept as follows. I will quote
“It is true that an individual molecule of CO2 has a short residence time in the atmosphere. However, in most cases when a molecule of CO2 leaves the atmosphere it is simply swapping places with one in the ocean. Thus, the warming potential of CO2 has very little to do with the residence time of CO2. What really governs the warming potential is how long the extra CO2 remains in the atmosphere.”
Don’t forget that that quote is NOT from an individual poster. That is a direct quote from the site’s managers. The stupidity boggles the mind. On the one hand he is not questioning that CO2 has a short lifetime in the atmosphere, but in the last sentence he is stating that the warming potential depends on how long. He contradicts himself, but he is also wrong in that the exact residence time doesnt really matter as long as there is a reasonable turnover. As long as there are new CO2 molecules going in and others going out, then there is a turnover. In this case there is a reasonable turnover of more than 25%. The residence time in this case to get down to 1% of original CO2 remainng is ~ 16 years. after 1 year there is only 75% of original CO2 left and after 3 years there is only 42% of the original CO2 left. The IPCC gives hundreds of years for residence time.
Apparently the IPCC cant do math. So since photons dont know the difference between man made ppm CO2 and nature ppm CO2, nor the difference bewteen old CO2 and new CO2, the factor that counts is the ratio of the turnover vis a vis manmade vs nature. The alarmists argue that before man burned fossil fuels there was no increase in CO2 therefore the extra CO2 is all caused by man and thus all temperature changes are caused by man. We know that the temperature ( before man burned fossil fuels) went up and down. The world had flat CO2 emissions for 3 years 2014-2016 and the CO2 levels in the atmosphere still went up at the same rate of increase. Since we burn only 8Gt per because of fossil fuels, then fossil fuels are only causing 4ppm/109ppm = 3.6 % of the turnover. So the actual multiple is 96.4/3.6 = 26.7 So even though we can’t prove that man’s addition to the CO2 levels are not causing a temperature increase , in the last 30 years there has definitely been an increase in the greening of the earth. So that may explain the difference between the 4.5 ppm man causes to be added and the net of 2ppm in the atmosphere each year.
Even though we have no proof that increased CO2 in atmosphere causes warming, let us assume for this exercise that the CO2 causes all the warming if indeed there has been warming and that man has caused this extra 2ppm each year. Since the rate of increase is 2ppm per year that is 0.5% increase. even if we accept that these increases are upsetting the balance of the CO2 cycle and it is all man’s fault , then mankind cant be causing more than 0.5% per year of any increase. If there is no increase in CO2 levels then the temperature cant increase because of CO2 because there would be a temperature equilibrium established. Since everybody agrees that the May figures from UAH results in a 1C per century increase, (the June figures may lower or raise it) then mankind is causing a 0.01 C per year increase. Put it another way it will take an extra 200ppm to achieve an increase of 1C. If it was to remain at 0.005 increase of ppm it would take another 80 years to achieve this 200 ppm increase. So the temperature is actually going up slower than the CO2 increase would indicate. In Canada I will gladly take that increase.
Small, modular, molten salt nuclear reactors. – Need to develope high temperature resistant materials.
What do you view as the deficiencies of currently available materials? The test reactor ran for 20,000 hours without issue and was finally shut down when the program was cancelled.
In the article, energy companies state that natural gas (predominantly methane) has half the carbon emissions of coal when used in power generation. What is meant by “carbon emissions”; being that carbon is a nonmetallic & tetravalent element & black in colour? Are weasel words being used to manipulate minds?
Methane combustion is summarised as CH4 + 2 O2 → CO2 + 2 H2O, with the heat of combustion at 55.5 MJ/kg. I see two end products, carbon dioxide & water, both essential for plant life & therefore us. At slightly over 400 ppm for CO2, I don’t see a problem.
Signs of intoxication have been produced by a 30-minute exposure to CO2 at 50,000 ppm [Aero 1953], and a few minutes exposure at 70,000 to 100,000 ppm produces unconsciousness [Flury and Zernik 1931]. It has been reported that submarine personnel exposed continuously at 30,000 ppm were only slightly affected, provided the oxygen content of the air was maintained at normal concentrations.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/124389.html
The only reason NG has half of the emissions of Coal is because of the fact that no US utility is building the newest generation Ultra Super Critical coal fired plants. China is light years ahead of the US in their use and development. And, now coal is cheaper than NG, with 200 – 250 years of Known reserves. These CCGT’s are the same as they built years ago and only used for “Peaking” units due to the high cost of NG. Wait till the cost of NG goes through the roof.
It should be obvious at this point that small modular molten salt/Thorium reactors are the future of energy. Totally safe, cheaper than any other power technology, rapidly deplorable, load following. can be sited anywhere (no need for bodies of water for cooling).
I’ve always thought that swamp gas could be the end destination that should satisfy everyone about CO2 – ie a source of methane that doesn’t need much time to produce naturally and is genuinely carbon neutral. The mentalists would be free to move onto some other, perhaps genuine, threat rather than flog the CO2 dead horse.
Wyoming says wind is the way to go. They are killing eagles, destroying the environment and make a mockery of the oil and gas industry that keeps the state afloat. It’s suicide by green but since Wyoming is a joke of a state anyway, the residents (soon to be leaving for greener pastures) don’t care.
Natural gas will never replace the green’s renewables because politicians are virtue signalers who just want to be loved by the press. If oil and gas states are stupid enough to brag about installing renewables, there is no hope.
I’ll believe that they are serious about wind power, when they start putting turbines in national parks.
How many thousand of them outside of national parks are we to be buried under while you think no one is serious?
If an IMMEDIATE end to CO2 emissions is needed to save the world, building windmills is not a very smart intermediate step.
We constantly hear alarms that “we have five years to act!” Well, what is the CO2 payback period on a windmill? Windmills are made from steel and concrete. A lot of it. How much CO2 is emitted as part of the construction process. and how many years does it take for the CO2 reductions from wind power to break even? I haven’t heard anyone say the number, but my guess is that it’s more than five.
Fortunately, every five years we get another five year extension.
Look at the foundation that supports these towers. Massive is almost an understatement.
In the end there will be only nuclear energy left that is capable of powering a devloped nations grid at the level required.
It’s juts a matter of how we get there, and whether we have to wait for the gas to be exhausted. I would keep gas for direct heating where the process is now over 90% efficient, CCGT is “only” 60%. And electrical heat energy is still 4 times the price of gas. Nuclear elelctricity needs to get a lot cheaper before it can do the heating job, and will with serious volume build out.
They (IPCC) want to cut CO2 emissions to ZERO? Okay, let’s start with them and the Howling Ecohippies FIRST getting their mouths sewn shut and being required to go around with rebreathing apparatus so that they aren’t polluting the atmosphere with CO2.
Just a question: since chemophiles produce methane, a carbon-based molecule, constantly, and they do it everywhere including in the Earth’s crust, how are these nincompoops going to shut that down???? It’s a natural process, mind you, and goes on all the time, so what were they planning to do? Ticket those chemophiles and make them pay fines?
I’d like to see that!
Seriously, those people are so money-grubbing greedy and stupid that they don’t even know they’re alive.
Renewables like solar and wind power often require natural gas power as backup to be of practical use. Thus oil and gas companies have no reason to want renewables eliminated. Renewables promote the use of natural gas over nuclear and coal.
From the mouth of a leading Renewable proponent, Robert F Kennedy Jr “Wind and Solar Plants are Gas Plants” https://atomicinsights.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-tells-the-colorado-oil-and-gas-association-that-wind-and-solar-plants-are-gas-plants/
No state or utility in the US is rolling back CO2 or renewable energy goals.
In the GHG modeling groups, there are ongoing battles about renewable energy vs nuclear.
And a push to more appropriately value the resiliency attributes of onsite fuel storage that coal and nuclear plants provide.
But every time a renewable energy goal is revised, it is increased and accelerated. None have been reduced or delayed.
A note from a previous piece of yours, Eric. I loved your phrase “green contempt.”