As the world grows dangerously warm due to carbon dioxide emissions, the last thing we want to do is keep building fossil fuel power plants that make the problem worse. But that’s exactly what we are doing.
If the existing fossil fuel energy infrastructure – such as coal-fired power stations – is not phased out early, it will produce another 650 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide over its lifetime, according to a study by Dan Tong of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues.
Add in the energy infrastructure that is in the planning stages, has been given the go-ahead or is under construction, and the total is 850 GtCO2. That is more than enough to take the planet past the 1.5°C mark and would leave little chance of limiting warming to 2°C.
But to argue about the numbers is to miss the key point: we’re in a hole, and we have not stopped digging. In fact, we’re digging faster than ever.
What we need to do is crystal clear. We need to stop building “all new CO2-emitting devices” as the paper puts it, and to shut down existing fossil fuel infrastructure as soon as possible.
A handful of countries are working towards this aim, but globally, energy demand is rising, and much of this increase is being met by building new fossil fuel infrastructure rather than clean energy sources.
Studies like this use the term “committed emissions” to describe this problem. But governments could shut down power stations early if they chose. There is precedent: after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, Germany decided to shut down all its reactors by 2022.
This was a costly decision, not least because Germany is being sued for nearly €20 billion by the companies involved. The nuclear phase-out in many countries is also a disaster in climate terms – the decline in nuclear power has wiped out nearly all the gains from the rise of renewables.
The global fossil fuel infrastructure is worth $22 trillion, according to Tong’s study, so replacing it won’t be cheap. But companies will voluntarily shut down fossil fuel plants if they can’t turn a profit. For instance, GE Electric announced this month that it was shutting a gas power plant in California 20 years early because of competition from renewables.
Putting a meaningful price on carbon that reflects the damage it causes could lead to more early shutdowns, by making fossil fuel plants account for their true economic cost. But where carbon prices exist, they are usually too low to be effective.
Instead, governments are spending more, not less, on coal. Spending by G20 countries to support coal has more than doubled to nearly $50 billion a year, according to a report released last week by the Overseas Development Institute.
In theory, fossil fuel energy infrastructure could be made carbon neutral by capturing and storing the carbon dioxide instead of releasing into the atmosphere. This is essential to limit warming, many think.
But retrofitting existing plants would be “tremendously expensive”, according to Tong’s study. Globally only a tiny amount of carbon is currently captured, and much of this is for usage rather than storage.
For instance, Tata Chemical Europe plans to capture CO2 for making chemicals such as baking soda, which will release the CO2 when used. In other cases, captured CO2 is being used to help extract oil.
So the picture is not pretty. Despite all the talks and targets, the world is not doing nearly enough. That needs to change, and fast.
Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1364-3
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