“We can bring CO2 emissions to zero, but this will not prevent climate change”
“We can bring CO2 emissions to zero, but this will not prevent climate change”
Energetics expert Arvi Hamburg says that we do not have power to fight climate change. We should rather adapt to it. Our real problem is energy.
Arvi Hamburg, chairman of the Committee of Energy of the Estonian Academy of Sciences and a former professor at Tallinn University of Technology says that there is no point in fighting climate change for one simple reason. "Fighting it is not affordable for us," he says. Climate is simply too complex a system for us to understand as to how and why it changes, he claims. It is affected by solar radiation, ocean currents, possibly the Earth's rotation angle to the Sun or how it changes, and so on. "But we don't know how to analyse them, we don't know all the data," he says. At the same time, we have a pretty good idea of how much CO2 can be emitted by burning a ton of coal. And the whole fight against climate change is based on that very specific issue - CO2. "What I'm saying is that we can bring CO2 emissions to zero, but this will not prevent climate change. The climate is still changing in its own way," he notes. "We're focusing on one tiny sector and making a huge mess of it, but I would guess there will be no benefit. Rather, we should learn to adapt," Hamburg says.
The real problem: energy
But the most important question for this adaptation is where does the energy come from? Take, for example, the desire to transition away from fossil fuels, a statement made by the participants at the UN climate conference in Dubai in December. To understand what this would mean, we need to look at the numbers. According to Hamburg, fossil fuels currently account for 80% of the world's total energy consumption and 64% of electricity generation. If you want to bring this to zero, you have to ask what will replace it. And it is not really just a question of what will replace it, but also that the world's energy needs will grow over time. Not only for the simple fact that people in the West are being forced into EVs, which means an additional need for electricity but also the fact that in much of the world, there is still very limited access to electricity. According to Hamburg, for example, energy consumption in most of the African countries has remained essentially stagnant for the last 30 years and around two billion people have no electricity at all. In such a context, it's not really surprising that big emerging and energy-hungry countries like India or China are planning to open up more and more coal-fired power plants, and coal exports hit a record high last year. Energy is simply needed for all kinds of economic activity and development. And not only that – fossil fuels and fossil fuel-based products are indispensable for us today. "Let's take agriculture as an example – if you don't make fertiliser from natural gas, what are you going to make fertiliser from? Yet, well, we need food, more and more mouths need to be fed as time goes by," Hamburg argues.
Let's come back to the substitution of fossil fuels in electricity generation. We see that it is not only a question of substitution, but also that of meeting the growth in energy demand. But how are we going to do this? Nuclear energy, for example? The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) predicts that nuclear capacity will more than double by 2050. However, looking at the big picture, nuclear currently accounts for 10% of global electricity generation. Doubling this would not be nearly enough to replace fossil fuels, much less meet the growth in energy demand. In the non-fossil calculation of things, additional hydropower capacity cannot be counted on either, because where it is available, it is already in use. Wind and solar, then? The promise or plan to generate all the electricity needed in 2030 from renewable sources alone is something we have heard from various countries. In the United Kingdom, for example, it is the Labour Party, which initially pledged £28 billion (€32.7 billion) a year, but has recently backtracked a little on specific financial pledges.
Is wind energy cheap and reliable?
The Estonian government is also aiming to cover the country's entire annual consumption with renewable electricity by 2030. Hamburg, who is an electrical engineer by profession, says anything can be done, of course, if the taxpayer is willing to pay for it. This means that the state, or all of us as taxpayers, pay the developer of a wind or solar farm. In other words, there is a lot of talk that renewables are cheap, but actually, it is only the subsidies that make them cheap.
The need for subsidies is only one problematic aspect of the wind energy development. Security of supply is another and more important question. Hamburg says that it would not be very wise to just develop renewables. We could install wind turbines that have the potential for twice as much as we consume, but what happens if there is no wind? “If there's no wind, there's just no wind, no matter how many wind turbines there are,” Hamburg says. According to Hamburg, in Estonia, solar panels can produce 11% of the time, while onshore wind can produce 28% of the time. For offshore wind turbines, the efficiency is typically a little higher – around 50%. At the same time, for example, the Auvere oil shale block's efficiency in Estonia is 89%. Hamburg is not suggesting that wind turbines or solar panels cannot or should not be used for energy production, but there are obvious problems with them and we need a constant, controllable power supply as well that is independent of the weather – be it an oil shale plant, gas plant, nuclear plant or something else. The choice here is narrow because of our own Net Zero policies. If we tax carbon emissions the way we do and subsidise renewables at the same time there is no incentive to invest in any type of power generation based on fossil fuels. Alongside finding a solution to the controllable power supply question, Hamburg says, we need to look at developing energy storage systems, but these options and technologies are still very limited.
All in all, in today's context, we see that while Europe is still worried about CO2 and climate in words, in reality, our coal power production is gaining as well. In Germany, for example, nearly 25% of electricity now comes from coal-fired power stations, since the decision was taken to close nuclear power stations there, and investments were made in renewables, but at the same time, cheap Russian gas was used as a supply for controllable energy production. Since cheap gas fell away after Russia's aggression toward Ukraine, there is nothing else left there but coal. Coal plants continue to operate in the same way in Denmark, which in our imagination might be the home of wind turbines, as well as elsewhere.
Always a pleasure to read your challenging posts.
“What I'm saying is that we can bring CO2 emissions to zero, but this will not prevent climate change”
This is a truism but hides the more complex issues, by conflating warming of the surface of the earth and climate change.
The physics of radiative forcing is simple and well understood. Lawrence Kraus has an excellent short book on how the atmosphere acts as a duvet, and is more effective the more greenhouse gases there are (and CO2 is not the only one). The more there is, the warmer the surface temperature of the earth has to be to maintain thermal balance with space.
Climate change is a complex system, with over 25 possible parameters to fit into differential equations, and some of these parameters have wide ranges. Warming of the surface temperature of the earth is the main driver of climate change. It is a paradox that some regions of the world may become colder as a result of climate change, eg Britain.
I agree out current politicians policies to ‘deal with’ this are a scam and unworkable. Academics overwhelmingly agree the planet is in big trouble, but your statement “...big emerging and energy-hungry countries like India or China are planning to open up more and more coal-fired power plants, and coal exports hit a record high last year.” shows us where the real power is in the world.