Energy and Climate Change - a message from America
By Dr. Derek Taylor, Former Energy Advisor to the European Commission
Most of you will know that US Administration this week (2
August) released a video with President Obama announcing “the biggest, most
important step” that the US has ever taken to combat climate change. Many of
you will have seen excerpts from the video and some may have watched it all. If
you have not yet, I strongly suggest you do as, in 2 minutes 26 seconds, it
contains what the large majority of people will ever need to know about climate
change and why we need to take immediate steps to combat it (https://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change
).
The following day, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
submitted a “Final Rule” setting out the “Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines
for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units” for
reducing greenhouse gas emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired electric
generating units. This is the proposed legislation that will bring about Mr
Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP).
In brief, the EPA will establish carbon dioxide emission
performance rates for the fossil-fuelled units which will lead to
state-specific CO2 goals and “emission standards or other measures” to implement
these performance rates (http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan/).
It may sound reasonably simple – but the fact that the rule
itself covers over 1500 pages of text suggests that it may be rather more
difficult in its implementation! Far more accessible documents are the “overview”
(http://www.epa.gov/airquality/cpp/fs-cpp-overview.pdf)
and the “Clean Power Plan by numbers” (http://www.epa.gov/airquality/cpp/fs-cpp-by-the-numbers.pdf).
These reveal that when the CPP is fully in place in
2030, carbon pollution from the power sector will be 32 percent below 2005
levels – a decrease in emissions of 870 million tons. Mandatory reductions will
begin in 2022, which should give the US energy sector sufficient time to make
investment in new or improved technology. Each state must submit their
individual plans by September 2016 and these could include an emission trading
scheme (hopefully more effective than the present EU one!)
This Clean Power Plan will be a boost to the renewable
energies sector – the video very obviously incorporates views of wind turbines
and solar panels – and for the nuclear industry. However, it will not be the
death knell for the fossil fuel sector. Two-thirds of the US's electricity is produced from fossil fuels. As a
result, these fuels cannot be phased out quickly. These fuels still
provide the lowest cost electricity – and the USA will not give them up at the
risk of losing their competitive edge. But what it should mean is that
technologies will need to be deployed that can reduce the emissions from such
plants, the foremost of which would likely be carbon capture and storage (CCS).
We could expect to see North America develop CCS even faster in the future, unfortunately
leaving Europe in its wake!
Of course, the US has rather more room for improvement in
its emissions than most other countries in the World. As President Obama says,
the USA is only second behind china in its total CO2 emissions. However, what
he doesn’t say is that, according to the World Bank, per capita emissions in the USA are around
two and a half times higher than those in China (and significantly higher than
twice those of the average European). Reducing these emissions will still not
be an easy task and lurking in the background is the spectre of a Republican
Administration reversing whatever President Obama is able to achieve on
combating Climate Change during his remaining time in the Oval Office.
But at a time when all roads lead to Paris and COP21 later
this year, this new message from America should – and must – be warmly welcomed
by all those concerned about the future of our planet and, above all, acted on now.
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