Response to Cathles and Victor interview on NPR

Note: this post is in response to an NPR interview of Profs Larry Cathles and David Victor on NPR's ALL THings Considered on Sun. July 15, 2012. A shortened version was posted to the comments for the story at npr.org
 There are problems with both Cathles’ and Victor’s arguments as presented in the piece.

 First, Cathles talks about up to a 40% reduction in CO2 by converting to natural gas. He doesn’t mention time frame: this conversion would 2-3 decades, by which time we should be looking at an almost complete phase-out of fossil fuels to at least stop making climate change much worse – by that time we will almost certainly have our hands full with the effects of climate change, thanks to the carbon that we have already emitted, or are about to emit in the coming years.

There is also no mention of current uses of natural gas for space and water heat, as well as industrial heating. In the absence of renewables these emissions would probably continue unchanged, and they are substantial. The bottom line is that we currently get roughly 85% of our energy from fossil fuels. Even if you convert that entire amount to natural gas from coal and oil (electricity, heating, transportation) you may reduce a lot of carbon, but you still have a lot left.

As for Victor, his notion that “renewables will have to learn to compete with gas” when it makes electricity for 2 cents a kWh ignores the basic physics of energy conversion. Renewables are expensive because they are diffuse, so you need lots of infrastructure to concentrate the diffuse energy into a form that we can use or transmit long distances. Even if you get clever about the turbines or photovoltaic cells, you are left with vast amounts of steel, concrete, and wiring needed, and that stuff is getting more expensive, not less. It’s hard to “prove” that something can’t be invented, but when I look at the whole-system cost (haven’t even talked about storage or smart grid yet) I just don’t see how it can be done.

Gas, like other fossil fuels, on the other hand, Mother Nature has done the work of concentrating the energy for us – we just figure out a system for getting it out of the ground, and away we go. Also, we get to control when it is burned and when it isn’t – dispatchability. Very nice stuff indeed.

Solar and wind are within range if we are willing to absorb higher costs and adjust, but if we insist on renewables at 2 cents a kWh with no tax on carbon emissions, we might need to wait a long time for that to work out, if ever. And a long time is one thing we just don’t have.

Which points to the solution: instead of subsidizing renewables to make them cheap, gradually phase in a carbon tax, cap and trade system, or renewable portfolio standard that will slowly but surely make fossil fuels that emit carbon to the atmosphere more expensive. Society would adjust, both by building more renewables and adapting energy consumption habits to reflect the higher cost. As a bargaining chip, offer the existing fossil fuel industry a path to transition to a new role in this new energy future, like we offered a “Peace Dividend” to the defense industry at the end of the cold war. This approach isn’t going to win any beauty contests, but if we care about our children and grandchildrens’ future, I think it is the only one that will work.