Unholy Green Alliance

[xchrom]

http://www.slate.com/id/2299310/

When the United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change issued its report on renewable energy in May, it released only a summary. The IPCC's spin-doctors presented this as the take-home message for journalists: "Close to 80 percent of the world's energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies."

Last month the IPCC released the full report, with the data behind this startlingly optimistic claim. It is based solely on the most optimistic of 164 modeling scenarios that researchers investigated. And this single scenario stems from a single study that was traced back to a report by the environmental organization Greenpeace. The author of that report—a Greenpeace staff member—was one of the IPCC lead authors. The claim rests on the assumption of a large reduction in global energy use. Given the number of people climbing out of poverty in China and India, that is a deeply implausible scenario.

When the IPCC first made the claim, global-warming activists and renewable-energy companies cheered. "The report clearly demonstrates that renewable technologies could supply the world with more energy than it would ever need," said Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council.

This sort of reaction—activists and big energy companies uniting to applaud anything that suggests a need for increased subsidies to alternative energy—has been famously described as the so-called "bootleggers and Baptists" theory of politics. The phrase comes from the South, where many jurisdictions required stores to close on Sunday, thus preventing the sale of alcohol. The regulation was supported by religious groups for moral reasons and by bootleggers for market reasons. Politicians would adopt the Baptists' pious rhetoric, while quietly taking campaign contributions from the bootleggers.

[txlibdem]

1. Do you think that alternative energy should not receive any subsidies?

Just curious about your position.

[xchrom]

2. it's not that i think they shouldn't receive subsidies -- but --

any company that does business w/ or receives subsidies from should be more regularly reviewed & scrutinized to make sure everything is above board.

the people are rightfully upset when their money is used badly & it happens too often.

[kristopher]

4. This is a climate denier screed that deserves nothing but condemnation.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

[kristopher]

3. The Study unquestionably shows that renewables can (and will) power the modern world.

You omit the piece is climate denier Bjørn Lomborg. An excellent example of the way Lomborg distorts is the implication from this statement:
"...most optimistic of 164 modeling scenarios that researchers investigated. And this single scenario stems from a single study that was traced back to a report by the environmental organization Greenpeace. The claim being that the strong potential of renewables documented in this report is based on biased information and analysis from those damned environmentalists.

Is that a fair rendering of what is unquestionably the most comprehensive study of this type ever done? Lpmborg goes on to say the "author of that report—a Greenpeace staff member—was one of the IPCC lead authors. The claim rests on the assumption of a large reduction in global energy use. Given the number of people climbing out of poverty in China and India, that is a deeply implausible scenario."

So he is not only implying bias on the part of Greenpeace, but the entire IPCC panel of author's and reviewers from dozens of countries. To support that he focuses attention on a single contributor and then says that the claim rests on the assumption of a large reduction in energy use. What he omits is that business-as-usual high energy use scenarios where existing policies continue to favor fossil fuels also produced rapid deployment of renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency because of constraints in fossil fuel availability.

His writing also implies that ONLY the Greenpeace scenario produced results showing "80% by 2050", implying it is an outlier, when in fact it is representative of the trend revealed by all of the models considered. The point is also made that these trends continue through 2100.

10.2 Synthesis of mitigation scenarios for different renewable energy strategies
This section reviews 164 recent medium- to long-term scenarios from 16 global energy-economic and integrated assessment models. These scenarios are among the most sophisticated explorations of how the future might evolve to address climate change; as such, they provide a window into current understanding of the role of RE technologies in climate mitigation....
<snip>

10.2.1.2 Strengths and weaknesses of quantitative scenarios
Scenarios are a tool for understanding, but not predicting, the future. They provide a plausible description of how the future may develop based on a coherent and internally consistent set of assumptions about key driving forces (e.g., rate of technological change, prices) and relationships (IPCC, 2007). In the context of this report, scenarios are thus a means to explore the potential contribution of RE to future energy supplies and to identify the drivers of renewable deployment.

<snip>

At the same time, it is also important to note that despite the variation, the absolute magnitudes of RE deployment are dramatically higher than those of today in the vast majority of the scenarios. In 2008, global renewable primary energy supply in direct equivalent stood at 63.6 EJ/yr (IEA, 2010d),2 with more than 30 EJ/yr of this being traditional biomass. In contrast, by 2030 many scenarios indicate a doubling of RE deployment or more compared to today, and this is accompanied in most scenarios by a reduction in traditional biomass, implying substantial growth in modern sources. By 2050, RE deployment levels in most scenarios are higher than 100 EJ/yr (median at 173 EJ/yr), reach 200 EJ/yr in many of the scenarios and more than 400 EJ/yr in some cases. Given that traditional biomass use decreases in most scenarios, the scenarios represent an increase in RE production (excluding traditional biomass) of anywhere from roughly three- to more than ten-fold. Similarly, the global primary energy supply share of RE differs substantially among the scenarios. More than half of the scenarios show a contribution of RE in excess of a 17% share of primary energy supply in 2030, rising to more than 27% in 2050. The scenarios with the highest RE shares reach approximately 43% in 2030 and 77% in 2050. RE deployment levels in 2100 are substantially larger than these, reflecting continued growth throughout the century.

Indeed, RE deployment is quite large in many of the baseline scenarios; that is, scenarios without any explicit climate policy. By 2030, RE deployment levels of up to about 120 EJ/yr are projected, with many baseline scenarios reaching more than 100 EJ/yr in 2050 and in some cases up to 250 EJ/yr. These large RE baseline deployments result directly from the assumption that energy consumption will continue to grow substantially throughout the century and assumptions that render RE technologies economically competitive in many applications absent climate policy...

You can download the full 1500 page report here http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Full_Report

Or just the relevant chapter 10 here http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Ch10

[kristopher]

5. Also read: "Honest Assessments of Our Energy Future"

Here, one of the lead authors of the report responds to similar criticism...

Honest Assessments of Our Energy Future

by Daniel Kammen, Sam Borgeson, and Kevin Fingerman
Wednesday, June 29, 2011

At long last, scientists, governments, and significant elements of the business community are in agreement that we can build a low-carbon, sustainable, global energy economy. That was the finding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which released its Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources last month, stating that 80 percent of global energy needs could come from renewable energy by 2050. The constraint in making this a reality is not technology, land area, or resources, but willpower. The IPCC found that what is required is the leadership to coordinate the needed policy measures.

Unfortunately, misinformation is being propagated by interests favoring the status quo. The June 7, 2011, op-ed, The Gas is Greener by Robert Bryce in The New York Times is a sad example. Using rhetorical arguments and faulty calculations, Bryce argues that renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar are somehow more environmentally destructive than natural gas and nuclear energy. This opinion is at odds with the analytic findings of the several hundred analysts who developed the IPCC report and the community of nations who reviewed and then endorse the report.

Can we build this new energy economy? Consider the example of California, where detailed and extensively reviewed assessments have shown that with integration and coordination we can readily meet the mandate that one-third of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020. In projecting the impact of this mandate, Bryce makes several errors, each substantially increasing his estimate of its difficulty. He first ignores the 18 percent of California electricity that already comes from renewable sources, and then inexplicably bases his calculations on peak historic demand rather than the total annual consumption that is subject to this mandate. This selective lens allows Bryce, like many nay-sayers, to overestimate new infrastructure requirements by over 400%. Moreover, both wind and solar are compatible with many other land uses and neither can be said to spoil the land they sit on in any way analogous to fossil fuel extraction or nuclear waste storage. The wind and solar industries face enormous market incentives to minimize their environmental impacts and both have impressive track records of ongoing innovation in this area.

Meeting a 33 percent renewable electricity mandate nationwide would require on the order of 800 square miles of total area–much of which could be on the tops of buildings or in the case of wind, integrated into existing farmland (as is already the case in many windfarms). This is less than twice the size of Edwards Air force base, and less than one third of the area of forest estimated by EPA to have already been destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining.

Critics of the green energy economy often omit key information ...


http://blog.rmi.org/HonestAssessmentsOurEnergyFuture

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=304024&mesg_id=304024