Greenhouse gases, climate change and the transition from coal to low-carbon electricity
By Nathan Myhrvold, K. Caldeira. 2012
132 citations recorded by the source corpus.
A transition from the global system of coal-based electricity generation to low-greenhouse-gas-emission energy technologies is required to mitigate climate change in the long term. The use of current infrastructure to build this new low-emission system necessitates additional emissions of greenhouse gases, and the coal-based infrastructure will continue to emit substantial amounts of greenhouse gases as it is phased out. Furthermore, ocean thermal inertia delays the climate benefits of emissions reductions. By constructing a quantitative model of energy system transitions that includes life-cycle emissions and the central physics of greenhouse warming, we estimate the global warming expected to occur as a result of build-outs of new energy technologies ranging from 100 GWe to 10 TWe in size and 1–100 yr in duration. We show that rapid deployment of low-emission energy systems can do little to diminish the climate impacts in the first half of this century. Conservation, wind, solar, nuclear power, and possibly carbon capture and storage appear to be able to achieve substantial climate benefits in the second half of this century; however, natural gas cannot.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2782b73b6bf91bfabb81cfbc44eb2d0335036f95
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Economics and Econometrics
- Manfred Lenzen
- Dominik Wiedenhofer
- J. Steinberger
- K. Caldeira
- G. P. Peters
- T. Wiedmann
- D. Guan
- Justin Kitzes
In Global and Planetary Change
- Manfred Lenzen
- J. Steinberger
- K. Caldeira
- Dominik Wiedenhofer
- G. P. Peters
- Robbie M. Andrew
- Justin Kitzes
- D. Guan
In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
- J. Steinberger
- Dominik Wiedenhofer
- K. Caldeira
- Manfred Lenzen
- Edgar G. Hertwich
- G. P. Peters
- Richard Wood
- T. Wiedmann
Citations in the corpus
- Energy requirements of consumption: Urban form, climatic and socio-economic factors, rebounds and their policy implications (2013, background): “Additionally purely technical solutions, like a rapid transformation of the energy system, which in Australia is highly dependent on coal and oil, to renewable electricity can be expected to yield greenhouse gas reductions probably not until the 2nd half of the 21st century (Myhrvold and Caldeira, 2”
- Climate benefits of natural gas as a bridge fuel and potential delay of near-zero energy systems (2016, background): “Most of the life cycle GHG emissions from fossil fuel (coal and natural gas) energy systems occur during the operational period and not the construction period [6,26,27].”
- Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking) (2014, unknown): “Myhrvold and Caldeira [73] assessed future energy portfolios and determined that energy efficiency, wind, solar, nuclear power, and possibly carbon capture and storage appear to be able to achieve substantial climate benefits in the second half of this century, but that natural gas cannot, because o”