I recently spoke at Vancouver’s Port
Metro 2050 Energy Forum. I talked about
the need to reframe the debate of energy supply, and to focus on solutions that
could either provide—or avert the use of—energy at the scale of about 1 cmo/yr. The presentations are now posted on the web.
My talk (about 30 min long) is in Session 1, and it begins around minute
36. Too bad that in the posted video the camera just focuses on the
speakers and not the slides they were showing. The slides may be
downloaded from the same site.
The first presentation
by Sandra Winkler of the World Energy Council covers the latest WEC thinking
about managing the energy, economy, and environment trilemma. WEC lays out two
extreme scenarios, dubbed Jazz and Symphony. The Jazz scenario is trade based,
consumer driven, and focused on access and affordability It achieves growth
through low cost energy and Governments facilitate GHG actions. It leads to a rather high demand for energy by
2050 of 880 EJ (about 6 cmo). The Symphony scenario is government led, voter
driven, and focused on meeting environmental goals and energy security. It
includes a binding international agreement on curbing GHG emissions. Under this
scenario, global energy demand in 2050 is 700 EJ (4.6 cmo). Either way, the
global energy demand does not flatten, but increases by about 50% or 100% of
current levels.
In the second session there are
presentations about the measures maritime industry is taking to minimize its
carbon footprint. Ginger Garte from Lloyds Register pointed out that about 40%
of the fuel used on cruise ships goes to powering their hotel services, and 60%
is used for propulsion. Thus, there are
opportunities for cutting fuel use by undertaking efficiency measures ranging
from LED lighting, replacing sheets and towels only when requested by guests,
and smarter management of distributing power to different galleys. She also
discussed newer hull designs and coatings to reduce drag and improve the fuel
efficiency of the propulsion system. The presentation by Lee Kindberg contains
a startling bit of information. It was an an eye-opener for me. She points out that while the carbon footprint
for shipping a pair of sneakers from China to Europe in a container ship is 100
g-CO2, the carbon footprint for a 20-km car trip in an efficient
diesel automobile to purchase it at the local mall is 1800 g-CO2. Like she said, “Mode of transportation
matters.” And, I would add that one needs to be quantitative about these matters.
The final presentation in this
set is by Storm Purdy from GE. His talk
focuses on the opportunity presented by the increased availability of natural
gas in North America by the developments in shale gas technology. Already it has allowed the US to reduce its
energy-related CO2 emissions from a peak of 6.0 billion metric tons
in 2007 to 5.2 billion metric tonnes last witnessed in 1992. He also described the challenges to
increasing natural gas production and installing the requisite infrastructure
to handle the wider distribution and use.
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ReplyDeleteThanks, a thought-provoking post. You might like to consider this post too House of Change
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