One small step?

Nov. 27, 2006
No less an authority than the International Energy Agency has renewed its warning about a future of limited fossil energy and more environmental damage from burning too much of it.

No less an authority than the International Energy Agency has renewed its warning about a future of limited fossil energy and more environmental damage from burning too much of it.

At the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 12th annual conference in Nairobi earlier this month, IEA Executive Director Claude Mandil addressed twin concerns: energy security and environmental threat.

He based his remarks on IEA’s recent World Energy Outlook 2006, which envisions a world lacking “adequate and secure supplies of energy at affordable prices” and facing “environmental harm caused by consuming too much of it.”

The WEO06 “confirms that fossil-fuel demand and trade flows, and greenhouse-gas emissions would follow their current unsustainable paths through to 2030 in the absence of new government action.”

Government action should, Mandil said, encourage private-sector investment in practices and technologies that move the world away from dependence on fossil fuels.

Nearly simultaneously with his remarks came news that seems to confirm private industry is indeed making small steps in that direction.

Grim vision

The WEO06 reference scenario takes into account, among other conditions, how global energy markets will evolve under policies enacted by mid-2006 and assumes no new actions are taken (OGJ, Nov. 20, 2006, p. 28).

It is a sobering scenario: Primary energy demand worldwide increases by slightly more than 50% through 2030, growing by an average 1.6%/year, and by more than 25% through 2015 alone.

More than 70% of the increase in demand comes from developing countries, “with China alone accounting for 30%.” Growth of these countries’ economies and populations will shift the center of gravity of global energy demand, says the study.

In the reference scenario, fossil fuels’ dominance of world energy demand through 2030 actually goes up, to 81% from 80%. But among fossil fuels, “coal sees the biggest increase in demand in absolute terms, driven mainly by power generation.” Coal remains second in its share of demand, behind crude oil.

That’s bad news for any progress on reducing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions.

Under the reference scenario, global energy-related CO2 emissions in 2004-30 increase by 55%. Coal, which in 2003 became the No. 1 contributor to CO2 emissions, “consolidates this position through to 2030,” says WEO06.

And just as developing countries, under the reference scenario, lead the way in energy demand growth, they also lead in CO2 emissions growth. Their share in world emissions rises to more than 50% by 2030 from 39% in 2004.

Again, China leads among developing countries, “responsible for about 39% of the rise in global emissions.” The country’s emissions in 2004-30 more than double.

Under the reference scenario, China overtakes the US before 2010 as the “world’s biggest emitter.”

Burning biogas

On the same day Mandil was speaking, the US Energy Information Administration was reporting that total GHG emissions in the US grew more slowly in 2005-by 0.6%-than for any year since 1990 (OGJ, Nov. 20, 2006, p. 34). For the previous 14 years, GHG emissions in the US have grown at an average 1%/year.

The report admits that last year some unusual factors held down energy consumption, and therefore GHG emissions, among them severe weather and higher energy prices.

But there was other, admittedly small but no less encouraging news from California involving a unit of a major oil company.

Chevron Energy Solutions and the city of Millbrae, Calif., have completed facilities at Millbrae’s water-pollution control plant that use inedible kitchen grease from restaurants to produce biogas. This biogas is then burned to generate renewable power and heat to treat the city’s wastewater.

Microorganisms in the plant’s digester tanks, said the company, eat the grease and other organic matter, naturally producing methane gas, which fuels the plant’s new 250-kw microturbine cogenerator to produce electricity for wastewater treatment.

“Meanwhile, excess heat produced by the cogenerator warms the digester tanks to their optimum temperature for methane production,” it said.

The process will generate about 1.7 million kw-hr/year, said the company, meeting 80% of the plant’s power needs. The net effect will reduce CO2 emissions by 1.2 million lb/year.

The $5.5-million total cost of the project was reduced by about $200,000, thanks to a rebate through California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program and administered by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Maybe this is the kind of government action Mandil was talking about.