Chapter 26
Global Climate Change and the Direction of Technological Change

Andrew Tylecote

Introduction

This chapter presents an unfamiliar approach to a familiar issue: man-made climate change. It is known that the emission of greenhouse gases tends to cause global warming, that the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, persists in the atmosphere for centuries, and that emissions of this and other greenhouse gases are amply high enough to cause substantial and continuing warming. Since most of the world’s population lives in areas in which excessive heat already presents problems, this must be of deep concern, except to those who disbelieve the science. It is also clear that rising temperatures will lead to shifting rainfall patterns and other meteorological miseries (“extreme weather events”). It follows that mankind needs to take action to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions (GGe) quickly and far – indeed to zero: the more challenging because of rising population and rising income per head, which must tend to push them up. Technological change across a wide front will play a crucial role. A wide range of economic (and other) incentives will be required both to drive such change and to get GGe-saving (“carbon-saving”) technologies taken up as fast as possible.

This is all so familiar as to be almost banal – see Stern (2009) and next section. And yet GGe are not only continuing, but continuing to rise, because few countries are taking action which matches the magnitude of the challenge. The countries doing least are less developed countries, whose rising share of world population and income now accounts for a majority of GGe. The political inconveniences of action are clear, immediate, and specific to the decision-taker; the benefits from action will be spread across the world in general and centuries to come, and are most unlikely to be credited to any particular politician or businessman.

It follows that effective action against climate change will be taken much later than the good and wise have recommended. It is argued in this chapter that this has striking implications for the technologies which will need to be adopted and further developed once real action begins. It consequently has implications too for the technological development which should be done in the meantime.

I start by setting out the scientific consensus on greenhouse gases and climate change, and the policy position as of 2012/13. I then consider the process, and the technologies, by which greenhouse gas emissions might be reduced – to zero, net. It appears that the required speed of transition to a “carbon-neutral” world has a very important effect on the appropriate means of getting there. Where, as predicted, a very abrupt transition will be needed, roundaboutness in the expansion of a technology turns out to be a problem; and the best protection against this is the development of general and flexible technological competences. It is also necessary to take account of the likely positions of government. Even when the “real action” has begun, full commitment from most of the less developed countries’ governments is unlikely, and I therefore set out means by which their economies might be brought toward carbon neutrality nevertheless.

The Oncoming Storm

In 2012 greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere were ~476 ppm CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent, allowing for other GGs such as methane). They were rising at just over 1.4% per year, a rate which has been maintained for many years (it is the 1950–1990 average, and that for 1990–2012). Carbon dioxide emissions account for about two thirds of net GGe, and CO2 concentrations were 393 ppm, rising at 1.7% per year, 1990–2012, and substantially faster than that since 2000 (NOAA 2013).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that a constant concentration of CO2 alone at 550 ppm, 40% above 2012 levels (leaving the other GGs at 2012 levels) would lead in time to an average increase in Earth’s temperature of ~3°C over pre-industrial levels (NOAA 2013). At recent rates of emissions we shall reach this level in the early 2030s. This prospect would be alarming enough, given its implications for climate change more broadly, and the likely increase in extreme weather events such as drought, floods, and typhoons. However the further GG concentrations are to rise, the greater the uncertainties about their effects. Moreover, “if this trend continues, it will put emissions on a trajectory corresponding to an average global temperature increase of around 6°C in the long term” (IEA 2013: 7). Consider, en route, the effects of a 4°C rise:

At an average global temperature rise of 4°C, the hottest days experienced would be 6°C to 12°C hotter, … yields for key crops such as maize, wheat and rice would drop by as much as 40%. Four degrees could be incompatible with organised global community and would inevitably lead to conflict and disruption and could potentially be beyond adaptation.

(Dr Alice Bows, University of Manchester, speaking at the Warsaw meeting: Redfearn 2013)

The least that might be expected of governments, facing oncoming climate disaster, is to abstain from encouraging fossil fuel use through subsidy. In 2009, G20 leaders committed to “rationalize and phase-out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption” (Schwanitz et al. 2014: 882). Nonetheless, subsidies to fossil fuels continued to grow, to ~$523bn in 2011. Less developed countries, which are now responsible for most GG emissions, are also responsible for most fossil fuel subsidies. (As of 2005, consumer energy subsidies on fossil fuels in less developed economies amounted to ~$350bn per year (Schwanitz et al. 2014).) In energy-importing countries like India, and even in exporting ones like Nigeria, this is extremely expensive for the government; but it is done nonetheless (Siddig et al. 2014). Developing countries’ economic growth is decidedly faster than advanced countries (higher per capita, and their populations are growing faster), and they are moving into the stage of growth which tends to be resource-intensive (expanding manufacturing; massive spread of consumer durables including cars). Less developed economies (“non-OECD”) are currently expected to account for more than 75% of world primary energy demand by 2035 (Channell, Jansen, et al. 2013: Figure 5). They depend now overwhelmingly on fossil fuels to satisfy that demand, and between now and 2030 are expected to do so to satisfy the large bulk (over 75%) of the increment of demand (Channell, Jansen, et al. 2013: Figure 9). Meanwhile the OECD economies are expected to keep their fossil fuel consumption roughly static.

The estimates of Channell et al. are of particular interest, as the best recent guesses of experienced energy industry analysts, not as to what will happen on current policies, but as to what will happen, given currently expected policy changes. They chart the currently expected road to hell. (In principle any amount of fossil fuel consumption could be tolerated if it were neutralized by effective carbon capture and storage (CCS). As we see below, little CCS is currently in prospect.)

The need to address GGe in less developed economies was understood when the Kyoto Treaty of 1997 was negotiated, and a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was devised, under a UN umbrella, to come into force when the Treaty did, in 2005. The CDM is designed to provide funding for GGe-reducing projects in less developed economies, through the purchase of emissions permits in developed economies, by governments and businesses, as a partial alternative to cutting their own emissions. The United States, not having ratified Kyoto, has not participated; the European Union has, but made the cardinal error of giving out large numbers of permits to existing polluters free. Consequently the demand for permits is so low that the price has collapsed. The EU price of carbon, for those that must pay it through permits, dipped below €3 per tonne in early 2013, and as of early 2014 had been for years below $10 – insignificant (Hope 2014).

Even with brisk demand for permits the system would have been flawed. It gives incentives for particular groups of polluters in less developed economies to pollute less than they (allegedly) otherwise would have done. The incentive effect can easily be perverse – make sure you don’t reduce your pollution until someone pays you to do so – and it does not apply to behavior in general. Its effects are therefore trivial compared to those of the subsidies for fossil fuel use already mentioned (Latin 2012).

The CDM is also feeble compared to the fossil fuel preference shown by those responsible for electricity generation in less developed economies. As we see below, the most attractive alternatives – wind and solar – are troublesome: because they are intermittent, they require back-up or storage capacity, and it is technically difficult, and expensive, to maintain grid stability; they are inevitably scattered across the country, involving expensive transmission lines and needing to be protected from theft and disorder (Channell, Jansen, et al. 2013). Easier to order standard coal-fired generating plant and put it next to a coalmine or port. A modest length of high-voltage transmission lines will then get the electricity everywhere it is really needed, politically: in the least developed countries, typically the main urban areas plus the president’s home district. Even if all the pledges made by less developed countries for action to reduce emissions are acted on (together with those by developed countries), they will go nowhere near what is required to – probably – hold warming to 2°C (den Elzen, Hof, and Roelfsema 2013).

How will policy change commensurate with the need be brought about? Since the expectation of damaging climate change is not enough, it seems we must wait for the reality. Once we have, let us say, roughly as predicted, 2°C of warming above pre-industrial levels, and the extreme weather events expected to accompany that, public opinion at least in developed countries and China, may take the scientific consensus – that there is much worse to come – seriously. And these countries at least – countries with a coherent and effective state – will at last take action commensurate with the danger.

The nearer we are to the mouth of hell when we awake to our danger, and the faster we are moving, the more sharply we must brake. The implications of this are explored in the next section.

Getting Away from the Mouth of Hell

The Shift to loGGe and the Roundaboutness Problem

As each year passes without radical action, it creates another fait accompli: a further step toward intolerable climate change. First, the GG concentration rises further: and most of the greenhouse gases are very long-lived. This is a ratchet rather than a dial which can be turned back. Second, all kinds of long-lived equipment and infrastructure are created or maintained, which are designed for, or naturally suited to, high GG emissions (hiGGe). There are:

  • hiGGe patterns of settlement – sprawling suburbs and exurbs: conventional European-style cities and towns are relatively loGGe, favoring walking, cycling, and public transport (Wegener 1996; Rickaby 1987);
  • hiGGe buildings, poorly insulated, inefficiently heated and cooled;
  • hiGGe machinery, vehicles, and electricity generation using fossil fuels, inefficiently;
  • hiGGe agricultural equipment, using large quantities of nitrogenous fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, made with fossil fuels.

And third, there is a limited range of known technologies to draw on when making new equipment and infrastructure. That at least will have moved in the right direction – but not as far as it might have done.

The obvious urgent need is to replace hiGGe equipment and infrastructure by loGGe alternatives. Even our current limited range of known loGGe technologies allows us to do that. Suppose it is made profitable or mandatory to do so, through carbon taxation, emissions trading, or regulation. The process by which hiGGe gives way to newly-made loGGe then has (in the last analysis) three elements: labor, time, and consumption of natural resources – this last, involving emissions. Labor is required to make the new equipment; this takes time, and inevitably the making involves extra emissions. (In fact of course physical capital – equipment and infrastructure – is also required in the manufacture of new equipment and infrastructure. But this is, or was, made by labor, over time, with emissions.)

The way the replacement process unfolds depends very much on the advantage that loGGe now has. If there is little urgency, so the advantage given is small, loGGe may simply be bought instead of new hiGGe, all existing hiGGe being left in place until no longer fit for use. We suppose that the loGGe type of capital is more expensive to produce than hiGGe. So our route to lower GGe requires extra labor, and initially extra emissions (implied in the greater capital expenditure). It also takes time, of course – which in the circumstances assumed doesn’t seem to be a problem. But now let us assume that time is of the essence. Assume this urgency is transmitted to the decision-takers – through high carbon taxes, scarce emissions permits, or tight regulations. With a sudden much larger advantage of loGGe, even newly installed hiGGe may be scrapped, to make way for new loGGe. Then the net cost of loGGe, in labor and initial emissions, will be not much less than its gross costs – one cannot subtract the set-up costs saved by not installing hiGGe, because it has just been installed.

Then we shall hit the roundaboutness problem. Roundaboutness, or roundabout methods of production, is the process whereby goods are produced from or with the help of other goods (components and capital goods), which in their turn have been produced ditto ditto. A steel ladder, for example, will be produced only after the digging of iron ore, the smelting of steel, the making of machines that press steel into shape, the making of machines that make and help maintain those machines, and so on. As pointed out above, this requires labor, emissions, and time – the role of time being the key element of roundaboutness, for the economist who introduced the concept, Böhm-Bawerk (Buechner 1989). Roundaboutness is only problematic when we decide to make A (that ladder) and find that we have to make B first (the pressed steel), but can’t until we have begun by making C (the pressing machines and the steel), for which we need some D (iron ore, perhaps), and find we have none to spare. In other words it is the roundaboutness of newness or rapid change that we have to worry about.

Let me make the point by contrast, with an example where roundaboutness would be minimal. Suppose a developing country decides to shift to renewables by building a lot of small earth dams to generate hydro-electricity. Suppose the dams are made by fairly low-skilled workers with general purpose tools – picks, shovels, barrows. Assume that almost all the rest of the investment is in the making of the turbines, which are an established type, for which there is spare capacity. So, as soon as the decision is made, they can proceed with designing and building dams and making turbines, neither of which will take very long: they do not have to do anything else first.

The example has three helpful ingredients:

  1. No innovation is required: the technology is familiar.
  2. Most of the work can be done with general purpose tools and indeed general purpose workers – with physical and human capital which already exists in abundance and can be switched from some other use, or idleness.
  3. Where specific physical and human capital is required (probably in the manufacture of the turbines), there is spare capacity.

In consequence this route to renewable energy has very low roundaboutness.

Contrast (let us say) a decision to produce a very much larger amount of electricity, by windpower – if and when the windpower capacity of the world is fully stretched already, as it was in 2008. The 8000 distinct components required for a wind turbine include many that have to be manufactured to aerospace tolerances – but are much bigger – and must be both lightweight and robust (Ogando 2008). Such components need to be manufactured and put together with specialized equipment, used by skilled labor which needs to be trained accordingly. Some of them will require materials which are, or could quickly become, in short supply. Here we see a high degree of roundaboutness, implying extra emissions and long delays. Accordingly in 2008 some wind component manufacturers were quoting delivery dates of 2012 (Ogando 2008).

Note that roundaboutness is not simply a technical issue: it is also a function of quantities. Even those simple hydro-electric dams would be more roundabout if there were no spare turbine-making capacity, because then more capacity would have to be built: and there would be none if there were a lurch to hydro-electric power generation across the world.

The Route to Low-Carbon Electricity

There has been extensive research on the emissions costs of renewable energy, the most important means (potentially) of reducing emissions. In 2012

For the first time … the electricity generated by all the world’s installed solar photovoltaic (PV) panels … probably surpassed the amount of energy going into fabricating more modules … With continued technological advances, the global PV industry is poised to pay off its debt of energy as early as 2015, and no later than 2020.

(Golden 2013)

If the energy it used was from fossil fuels, thus extra GGe; and the energy it generated caused a corresponding reduction in GGe; then soon the global solar photovoltaic industry, cumulating its effects over its lifetime, will cease to be a net contributor to global warming! This relates to energy cannibalism: an effect where rapid growth of an entire energy-producing or energy efficiency industry creates a need for energy that uses (“cannibalizes”) the energy of existing power plants. With some adjustment, such life cycle analysis is also valid for emissions. In fact we require dynamic carbon life cycle analysis (Kenny, Law, and Pearce 2010), which takes into account not simply the GGe caused, and saved, during the life of equipment of technology X, but their timing. With “renewable” energy-producing technologies the emissions caused are overwhelmingly “up-front,” while all the savings are during the equipment’s life. One can thus calculate “carbon-neutral” growth rates for a technology, above which it increases rather than reduces GGe (see Table 26.1).

Table 26.1 Rankings of current electrical energy technologies according to carbon neutral growth rates.

Source: Kenny et al. (2010: Table 3).

Electrical Energy Technology Carbon-Neutral Growth Rate (%)
Geothermal 249
Wind 91
Biomass 50
Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST) 43
Small Hydro 43
Solar Photovoltaic 41
Nuclear 22
Hydro 5

The Table 26.1 figures assume the efficiencies of each technology to be fixed at the level known at the time of writing, ~2008. For wind and (above all) solar PV this is far from true. The rate of cost reduction of a technology depends on two factors: the rate of increase of installed capacity, worldwide, and the “learning rate” – the reduction in cost for each doubling of installed capacity. As of 2012, wind capacity was doubling roughly every three years, and its learning rate was 7.4%. Solar PV’s learning rate was 30% and its capacity was doubling every two years (Channell, Phuc, et al. 2013). (The average cost of a solar panel fell by 75% from 2009–2013: BP 2013 .) Both would therefore have carbon-neutral growth rates over 100% – no serious constraint at all. (On the other hand, CST and geothermal are at an insignificant scale thus far. Nuclear and hydro have very slow capacity growth and low learning rates.)

Solar PV and wind have already reached “grid parity” with fossil fuel-generated electricity in a wide range of locations (Channell, Lam, and Pourreza 2012). (The main determining factors are, for PV, level of insolation (sunniness) and retail electricity price, including “feed-in tariff”; for wind, percentage of capacity utilization (roughly, windiness) and wholesale price of electricity.) As of 2012 wind power generated 521 TWh of electricity, 2.3% of total world electricity generation, which gave it 49% of renewable power generation, with solar at 8.9%, solar PV somewhat less (BP 2013); but as we saw above, solar PV was closing fast.

Wind and solar are however intermittent technologies. There is a rule of thumb that up to 20% of total electricity production (within a given grid area) may be supplied by intermittent technologies without requiring extra back-up production (or storage) capacity for windless/sunless periods (Kenny et al. 2010). Above that proportion, back-up or storage capacity must be costed in – and so the GGe cost, up-front, must rise sharply. Here is an important current constraint on the expansion of wind and solar. But it is not God-given. Storage technologies are diverse and much work is being done to develop and cheapen them (Channell, Phuc, et al. 2013; Economist 2014a; Butler 2014). There are also fast developing alternatives (and complements):

  • Smart grids and smart appliances: means to reduce demand, for shorter or longer periods, in response to intermittency in supply (Kempener, Komor, and Hoke 2013).
  • Long-distance high-voltage direct-current transmission – the cheapest means to move electricity (Kempener et al. 2013). The wider the connected area, the less the windless/sunless intermittency problem, and so less storage or back-up capacity is needed.

Moreover wind and solar are complementary more than competitive. Wind provides base-load (blowing around the clock); solar meets the daytime peak. There is more sun in summer, and (in Europe at least) more wind in winter.

We can thus expect solar and wind to be highly competitive on cost by the beginning of the assumed “climate catch-up period,” so long as they are allowed to make the pace before it starts: that is, if the producers of solar PV electricity (mainly householders) and wind power (firms) are allowed to supply the grid at market rates, with no subsidy except that implied by the grid authority taking responsibility for back-up. The solar PV and wind industries will continue to expand rapidly, and so, pulled by them, will the back-up technologies, storage, smart grids/appliances, and long-distance transmission lines. (We return to the issue of renewable technologies in power generation in less developed economies below.)

But the challenge will be not simply to dominate the market for new power-generating equipment: it will be to replace the output of existing coal- and gas-fired power-stations. The total cost of the new renewable power generation – financially, and in emissions – will need to be less than the variable cost of the fossil fuel generation. This will become steadily harder, through the “low-hanging fruit” effect: the equipment that is replaced first, by expanding renewables production, is (presumably) the worst in GG emissions. The more is replaced, the lower the GGe of the capacity to be replaced next: thus conventional coal would go first, combined cycle gas with district heating last. And fossil fuel prices will fall, as the existing market shrinks, and it becomes clear that there will be little demand for them in future. At this stage the prior development of CCS will be of vital importance.

If the world is to have a reasonable chance of limiting the global average temperature increase to 2°C … less than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050, unless CCS technology is widely deployed. … If CCS is removed from the list of emissions reduction options in the electricity sector, the capital investment needed to meet the same emissions constraint is increased by 40% … CCS is currently the only large-scale mitigation option available to make deep reductions in the emissions from industrial sectors such as cement, iron and steel, chemicals and refining. Today, these emissions represent one-fifth of total global CO2 emissions, and the amount of CO2 they produce is likely to grow over the coming decades. … However, given today’s level of fossil fuel utilization, and that a carbon price as a key driver for CCS remains missing, the deployment of CCS is running far below the trajectory required to limit long-term global average temperature increases to 2°C.

(IEA 2013: 7–8)

The neglect of CCS may partly arise from its need for extra fossil fuel. Renewable energy sources reduce not only emissions, but also the need for energy imports. Fit CCS to a coal- or gas-fired power plant, and it needs more coal or gas for the same net electricity output.

The Route to Zero-Carbon Transport and Industry

By 2030, Channell, Jansen, et al. (2013) predict 7.7 btoe (billion tonnes of oil equivalent) for power generation, 4.7 btoe for industry, 2.8 btoe for transport, and 1.5 btoe for others. Unfortunately power generation is unusual in having renewable technologies with such immediate cost-competitiveness as solar and wind.

Transport exemplifies the roundaboutness problem: great economies in emissions could be made with railways and trams (using low-carbon electricity), cycling and walking. But that requires classic European patterns of settlement, with compact cities and towns – and rail infrastructure. For countries like the United States, to get from here to there would require much money, time, and emissions. Electric buses, trucks, and cars will be well suited to the existing infrastructure, plus charging facilities, but again will require much money, time and emissions, partly to improve the technologies. Biofuels can be used without delay for road vehicles, and indeed aircraft. However the “first generation” biofuels currently available require fertile land. The effective emissions cost of producing them must include the emissions needed to intensify production on the remaining agricultural land, to compensate for the land used for biofuels. Second generation biofuels will be produced on marginal land and from waste, and with higher levels of efficiency (see below) – but not yet.

The only transport mode which can produce electricity renewably, then use it, is the airship (pure or hybrid). Its large surface area is ideal for solar photovoltaic cells (Kalan 2013). Unlike all land transport, it requires no infrastructure en route; unlike conventional aircraft, it requires no large space and expensive ground infrastructure for take-off and landing. (Hybrid airships require a very short runway; pure airships none.) So now that its buoyancy management and control problems have essentially been solved (Stewart 2012), it could go point to point for most journeys, making it an attractive alternative to airfreight in the first instance (Jowit 2010). Unfortunately it is a striking example of path dependence: the airship is scarcely used, because it has scarcely been used since the 1930s. The faults which doomed the Hindenburg then – flammable lifting gas (hydrogen) and envelope materials – were dealt with long ago. But the competing modes have 80 years’ lead on their learning curves.

As IEA (2013) points out, industrial sources of CO2 provide excellent scope for the use of CCS; solar and wind can do little to help here. CO2 emissions from the global cement industry alone account for ~5% of total anthropogenic emissions (Worrell et al. 2001). A long list of feasible measures for reducing emissions (Liska et al. 2012; Palmer 2012) is headed by a switch from calcium to magnesium minerals as base. Magnesium carbonate parts with its CO2 at a much lower temperature than calcium carbonate does; magnesium-based concretes quickly reabsorb the CO2 driven off in cement production; are stronger; and bind with, rather than repel, cellulose-based filler (e.g., wood chips): four big steps toward carbon neutrality. All that is lacking is the incentive to switch.

Most cement is of course used in construction, which is a major user also of iron and steel (similar to cement in its total CO2 emissions: Gielen, Newman, and Patel 2008). The scope for saving emissions per ton of steel produced is, at the margin, far less than for concrete, but the scope for saving on total steel production is great: thus the construction industry, even for multistorey buildings, could switch to cross-laminated wood – potentially a carbon-negative material (Economist 2012b).

Chemicals and petrochemicals come third in emissions: 1.0 gigatonnes/year of CO2 emissions in 2004 against 1.7 Gt/year for iron and steel. The rise of modern biotechnology has opened the way to huge reductions in carbon emissions here. “Technically speaking, the overwhelming share of the total demand for organic chemicals and polymers [accounting for the bulk of emissions from this industry] could be covered from bio-based feedstocks” (Gielen et al. 2008: 476). Even with current technology, tropical sugar cane can be made into ethanol and thus ethylene and its many derivatives, with carbon neutrality. Much work is being done to allow the same route to be followed, starting from bio-waste materials containing cellulose (e.g., BBSRC 2012).

Inorganic chemicals are less important, but nonetheless 20% of all energy use in chemicals and petrochemicals goes to produce ammonia, most of which is used to produce nitrogen fertilizer. Its use causes about 0.8 Gt/year of emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), also a greenhouse gas. Most of the biosphere’s available nitrogen is already provided by biological fixation, mostly through leguminous plants (such as beans and other pulses) with symbiotic bacteria in root nodules (Gielen et al. 2008). We shall see below that this could be greatly extended.

Reflections on the Technologies Discussed

The Uses and Limitations of the Market Mechanism

A close examination of the economics of renewable energy shows the importance of using carbon taxes or similar uses of the price mechanism to drive the transition:

  • Technologies with relatively heavy up-front emissions costs, such as nuclear, will incur relatively high carbon taxes, to the advantage of their rivals. So they should.
  • Typically the sources cited in the last section say of disruptive carbon-reducing technologies, as concrete manufacturers do of magnesium concrete, “interesting, but without carbon taxes it is not worth the trouble.” And CCS cannot be worth the trouble without carbon taxes, or similar incentives.
  • Carbon-reducing technologies which are advancing rapidly would reduce carbon faster with carbon taxes. Thus the net gain from solar PV is significantly reduced by the electricity required to reduce silica to silicon (Golden 2013). Carbon taxation would steer this process to the lowest-emission sources.

There are however limits to the effectiveness of the “environmentally-adjusted” market mechanism. British experience shows how householders may spend far less on the thermal insulation of dwellings than is financially rational even without carbon taxes. If certain general practices are clearly carbon-reducing at modest cost, government should enforce them through regulation.

In the insulation case market pressures are baulked by householders’ ignorance, inertia, and poor access to capital. But the market mechanism has more fundamental limitations. It works superbly in allocating resources, over space – far less well, over (long periods of) time (Richardson 1960). Thus according to recent projections, wind turbines and electrical vehicles will require an increase in supply of neodymium and dysprosium of over 700% and 2600% respectively, during the next 25 years. It is not increasing so fast; once a shortage appears, it will take a long time to put right (Economist 2012a): the roundaboutness of the production process will see to that.

The investment problem with rare metals is that the investors in mines and refining capacity lack information about demand, and competing supply, far enough ahead. At all events, the market will ensure there will be a substantial demand (barring the unexpected triumph of technologies not requiring these metals), and therefore that there will be a substantial – though perhaps inadequate – supply. Airships are an example of a carbon-reducing technology which poses even deeper problems for the market mechanism. As pointed out above, path dependence and learning curves have meant that this transport mode, outside a few niches, is highly uncompetitive. Only large-scale government intervention can get this transport mode far enough down its learning curve to, so to speak, take off.

The Key Role of General Purpose Technologies: ICT and Biotechnology

Specific products and technologies draw on progress made by, and for, other products and technologies. Solar PV luckily shares its dependence on silicon and similar materials with an older and far larger complex of industries: the information and communication technology (ICT) sectors. The learning by and for these sectors about these materials, their capabilities, and production processes, has been of great value to solar PV.

The moral: Develop technological competences which have a diversity of uses, and can be switched to emissions-saving innovation once this is made profitable. Do this particularly where those innovations will/can use general purpose equipment.

The ICT sectors produce, and use, a cluster of technologies which constitute what is now called a “general purpose technology” (Jovanovic and Rousseau 2005). This GPT has myriad uses for the purposes of control, which allows the more economical use of energy and materials. Thus integrated crop management (ICM) uses ICT to optimize the quantities and location of water, fertilizers, and pesticides, giving large reductions (Lancon et al. 2007). Intensive use of ICT will be required to develop smart grids (US Department of Energy 2013); also road pricing systems, vital to manage demand for road space when new roads and railways cannot be built (Glaister and Graham 2004).

Happily ICT has already thrown up two types of general purpose capital equipment, the first now well established: computer numerically-controlled (CNC) machine tools, now subsumed into CAD-CAM: computer-aided design linked to computer-aided manufacturing. Next is 3D printing: a process of creating three-dimensional objects from digital instructions using materials printers. The term is roughly synonymous with “additive manufacturing.” The raw materials “added,” in layers, were initially powders of metals such as titanium, or of thermopolymers (Excell and Nathan 2010) but their range is expanding (LaMonica 2013): indeed the basic technology is being extended to tissue engineering to build body parts, “bio-printing,” by depositing layers of living cells onto a gel medium (Nathan 2010).

It is hard to envisage 3D printing being able to produce many established products as cheaply as they can be mass-produced with CAD-CAM. But it must help in unblocking capacity bottlenecks in the rapid ramp-up of production, thus in dealing with our roundaboutness problem.

Biotechnology is clearly a GPT of great potential in three key sectors: chemicals, agriculture, and medicine (Langeveld, Dixon, and Jaworski 2010).

As mentioned above, chemicals traditionally made by synthetic chemistry can be made, with far lower GGe, by micro-organisms (or plants), genetically modified to suit. Production is in fermentation tanks or in fields, where plants have been engineered to produce pharmaceuticals, for example: so, broadly speaking, in general purpose equipment. Develop the organisms first, learn how to use them, and production can be ramped up at high speed. Thus feces (farm and human) mixed with other organic waste can generate huge quantities of methane renewably, with high-grade organic fertilizer as by-product (Anaerobic Digestion 2014). Indigenous biomass resources could meet up to 44% of UK energy demand by 2050 without impacting food systems (Welfle, Gilbert, and Thornley 2014).

In agriculture, there is enormous potential for GGe savings by moving away from the established model, of annual crop plants grown with lavish watering, fertilizer, pesticides, and so on (Hazell 2009). The “bio-fixing” of nitrogen by leguminous plants was discussed above. The main crop plants (wheat, maize, rice, sugar cane, etc.) are grasses rather than leguminosae, but they too can benefit through interplanting with perennial leguminosae (Jordan 2013), a low-technology solution suitable for tropical small farmers. The grass family happily has a great deal of genetic variation. That within species can be exploited by conventional breeding. That among species makes them strong candidates for genetic modification. Thus some sugar cane varieties are capable of fixing nitrogen in association with the bacterium Glucoacetobacter diazotrophicus (Boddey et al. 1991). Maize (corn) and sugar cane use C4 photosynthesis, the others the less efficient C3 type. There are grasses which are tolerant of salty water (Munns, James, and Laeuchli 2006). No grasses appear to be insecticidal, but this trait has already been successfully transferred, from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) into cotton (Kingsbury 2009).

Many grasses, including sugar cane, are perennial. “Perennialization” of grain (and other) crops is potentially one of the largest contributors to GGe reductions. Since the root and part of the perennial plant’s stem remains, year after year, the expenses of annual growth are reduced; and the plant is more drought-resistant, because it has larger reserves. It is also more flood-resistant, partly because its larger roots stabilize the ground, giving erosion-resistance (Bell, Wade, and Ewing 2010). The large perennial root gives free biological CCS (Paustian et al.1997).

Again, general-purpose equipment is available for this transformation – for new crops can thrive in old fields, with existing tractors, harvesters, barns. And once the genetic modification has been achieved, the competences required are general purpose too.

Yet Bell et al. present the perennialization of wheat in Australia, through genetic engineering, as likely to take around 18 years from project inception to the point of reaching 25% of the winter crop area – and with a 50% chance of failure. Compare that with the speed of progress in the digital realm! This slowness and uncertainty of pay-off reflects the immaturity of the biotechnology GPT; but even as Bell et al. (2010) wrote, it was maturing. In 2005 the sequencing of the first of the grain genomes was announced – rice (the easiest, being smallest; soya followed in 2008, maize in 2009). International Rice Research Institute researchers were then able to enhance their conventional breeding methods with “marker-assisted back crossing” which allowed much faster breeding-in of valuable traits found in unusual rice strains. Flood-tolerant rice, its first fruit, went from experimental use in 2008 to being planted by five million farmers across the world five years later. IRRI promises drought- and heat-tolerance next (Economist 2014b). Similar acceleration may be expected with genetic engineering of new traits. The expectations expressed for soya are typical:

Right now it takes 15–20 years to get a new variety; we are hoping to make that 5–7 with the help of the genome. Markers identifying genes that breeders want can be used to find those plants that contain the genes without having to grow the plant to maturity. Or biotechnology can slot hot genes straight into plant cells.

(Marris 2008)

Now synthetic biology aims to apply engineering principles to genetic modification. “Synthetic biology applies the knowledge and tools developed in analytical biology to synthesise biological entities … drawing on expertise in molecular biology, computer science, chemistry, and engineering” (Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2012: 59.)

Whereas traditional genetic engineering might involve transferring a gene from one organism to another and hoping it will do what it is supposed to, synthetic biology is about designing organisms to solve specific problems. It entails a more precise level of control: as well as inserting a gene you are also tinkering with cellular machinery that governs when and how much of that gene gets expressed.

(Griggs 2013)

Since the building blocks of cells are fundamentally the same – DNA, RNA, amino-acids combined in proteins – the basic competences of synthetic biology have a very wide application. So here again is a (developing) body of general technological competences analogous to IT software, and indeed drawing heavily upon it. The money now is mostly on the pharma side, for example, engineering a phage (virus) to knock out drug-resistant staphyllococci (Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2012). But general competences built in one sector can be switched to another: to produce new species of algae, for example, which will (jointly) photosynthesize across the spectrum of visible light and thrive while doing so in the CO2-rich exhaust gases from coal- and gas-fired power stations, yielding oils for biofuel, and much else (Global CCS Institute 2011).

To conclude: biotechnology “upstream,” in agriculture very broadly defined, and “downstream,” in chemicals, is becoming strongly “carbon-capable” by transforming agriculture and chemicals into net capturers of carbon acquired by photosynthesis – though in agriculture it will have work to do merely to adapt to, protect against, and compensate for climate change. Agriculture can be made vastly more productive, and thus in principle able to go beyond feeding the human and other animal population to produce a large “carbon surplus”: enough to power its own requirements (e.g., biofuels for farm machinery), provide the feedstock for chemicals, and generate wood to be “locked up” in new construction, while increasing soil carbon (as in perennial roots) and above-soil carbon (new forest).

The Role of Less Developed Countries in Carbon Reduction

We saw above that less developed countries are increasingly the predominant source of GGe. So they must become the predominant location in which loGGe technologies are diffused, if not developed. On the other hand, we may expect most of their governments to remain laggards in the implementation of carbon taxes and similar emissions reduction measures. That is implied in the gloomy forecasts of Channell, Jansen, et al. (2013). A nightmare scenario can be imagined, in which the governments of the “carbon-reducing North” try to impose their policies – such as carbon taxes – on recalcitrant governments in the “carbon-increasing South”: “Do as we are now doing, not as we have done.” “Our people are suffering from drought, floods, and above all from the heat – and you want us to tax the fuel that makes the electricity that powers their air-conditioners? How much will you pay us?”

However the developments envisaged above open up a very different possibility: a split within the South. Less developed countries are virtually all rich in one resource whose value can be expected to rise – sunshine; and the part of their population with privileged access to this resource is that which lives in the countryside: at least until recently, the majority of the population. In virtually all of them, country people have inferior access to every other kind of resource: transport, education, medical care, electric power, and political and economic power. But the mobile phone already shows what the right technologies can do to even the scales between “country” and “town.” The biotechnological revolution can allow the “country” to generate an agricultural surplus without depending on the “town” to provide it with power, fertilizers, and pesticides; solar PV and other renewable energy technologies can yield a surplus of electric power available to develop rural industries, power country transport, and sell to the “town.”

For a time, there will be two competing models of energy production and use in less developed countries. As we have seen, the most convenient model for a non-OECD government whose priority is to provide electricity cheaply and fairly reliably to the major urban areas, is to generate it in large conventional power stations, probably from coal. Similarly, the simplest means of making transport fuel available is from its own or imported petroleum. Renewable technologies are distributed, scattered: hard to organize, control, protect.

So cities in such countries might mostly be trapped in the hiGGe model. But loGGe would touch them nevertheless. Apartment blocks have roofs; not all city buildings are high-rise; shanty towns could generate solar PV; nearby villages might export it. Even without feed-in tariffs, it would be attractive to have one’s own source of solar PV electricity, alongside the grid, if only for when the grid went down. But the more solar PV was used, the more strain there would be on the grid – just after sunset.

Picture a city in the (less developed) tropics, circa 2030. The summer heat has always been oppressive in that area; worse in the city; worst in apartment blocks. It is now a degree or two worse still, on average, due to climate change, and heat waves which push it up several degrees further have become more common. Air conditioning is no longer a luxury of the rich: it is necessary for survival. Grid electricity has become more expensive, if only because international pressure to remove subsidy has become irresistible. And then in a heatwave the grid goes down.

In the countryside a quite different model has become established. Each village is now at least self-sufficient in electricity and in biofuel for transport. Private or community entrepreneurs have provided the equipment for the solar PV and biofuel at market rates – as they had for 2000 Indian villages in one program by 2013 (Vidal 2013). So who needs a grid connection? Dirt roads are cheap, and can be built with village labor and initiative. And with 3D printing, and modern telecommunications, there is a greater degree of local self-sufficiency, whether for schooling, medicine, or repair of equipment.

The renewable village model triumphs, and the cities begin to empty.

Conclusion

This chapter started from a bleak assumption: that the world will, in a decade or two, be conscious of the danger of global environmental disaster due to climate change induced by GGe; and that policymakers at least in advanced countries will be, belatedly, prepared to take drastic action to avert – or rather mitigate – disaster. It showed that the very rapid expansion of a technology which would otherwise be an excellent means of reducing GGe, would introduce a number of problems which go under the heading of “roundaboutness.” Roundaboutness causes delay, particularly where it is necessary to innovate before investment; and it causes much higher GGe during the period of heavy investment than during the “steady state” later.

We considered what might be the most effective technologies in this situation, for energy production and energy saving, and the conditions under which they could be “ramped up” most quickly. Two key requirements emerged:

  • the development of general competences and flexible equipment which would cut down roundaboutness at source, so to speak.
  • precautionary investment in specific competences and capital which might otherwise become bottlenecks.

Two “general purpose” technologies looked like playing a vital part: ICT and biotechnology. ICT has reached a very high level of development, though applied relatively little in the key sectors of energy production and agriculture. Biotechnology has delivered much less. It could give enormous savings in GGe in chemicals production, and in agriculture and its feeder industries. Indeed in agriculture it offers opportunities for biological carbon capture and storage on a massive scale through enhanced plant growth and a switch from annual to perennial crops. Such changes would seem to have little roundaboutness in emissions, but potentially much roundaboutness in the development process. Genome sequencing has already reduced this; synthetic biology offers the prospect of reducing it further.

Probably most less developed countries will be slow, at government level, to join in what must be a crash program of carbon reduction. One should not despair of negotiation at global level, with a combination of positive incentives and pressure, but it was argued in the last section that there is a model of carbon reduction which can work at village level, with very little help from national government. The “North” can help this process by developing the necessary technologies and assisting in their diffusion and adaptation in the “South.”

References

  1. Anaerobic Digestion. 2014. http://www.biogas-info.co.uk (accessed January 9, 2015).
  2. BBSRC. 2012. “Big Score for British Biofuel Technology: Insight, Know-How and Collaboration Lead to Multi-Million Deal.” BBSRC, January 27. http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/news/industrial-biotechnology/2012/120127-f-british-biofuel-technology.aspx (accessed January 9, 2015).
  3. Bell, L.W., L.J. Wade, and M.A. Ewing. 2010. “Perennial Wheat: Environmental and Agronomic Prospects for Its Development in Australia.” Crop and Pasture Science 61: 679–690.
  4. Boddey, R.M., S. Urquiaga, V. Reis, and J. Döbereiner. 1991. “Biological Nitrogen Fixation Associated with Sugar Cane.” Plant and Soil 137: 111–117.
  5. BP. 2013. BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2013. London: BP.
  6. Buechner, M. Northrup. 1989. “Roundaboutness and Productivity in Böhm-Bawerk.” Southern Economic Journal 56: 499–510.
  7. Butler, Nick. 2014. “A Ray of Sunshine – Breakthroughs on Storage Can Change the Game for Solar Power.” Financial Times, May 4.
  8. Channell, Jason, Timothy Lam, and Shahriar Pourreza. 2012. Shale and Renewables: A Symbiotic Relationship. New York: Citigroup Global Markets.
  9. Channell, Jason, Nguyen Phuc, Shahriar Pourreza, and Timothy Lam. 2013. Battery Storage: The Next Solar Boom? New York: Citigroup Global Markets.
  10. Channell, Jason, Heath Jansen, Alastair Syme, Sofia Savvantidou, Edward Morse, and Anthony Yuen. 2013. Energy Darwinism: The Evolution of the Energy Industry. New York: Citigroup Global Markets.
  11. den Elzen, Michel, Andries Hof, and Mark Roelfsema. 2013. “Analysing the Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions of Mitigation Action Plans by Non-Annex I Countries by 2020.” Energy Policy 56: 633–643.
  12. Economist. 2012a. “Rare Earths and Climate Change: In a Hole?” The Economist, March 17, 83.
  13. Economist. 2012b. “Building Materials: Wooden Skyscrapers.” The Economist, August 30.
  14. Economist. 2014a. “Electricity Storage: Pumping Heat.” The Economist, March 12.
  15. Economist. 2014b. “The New Green Revolution: A Bigger Rice Bowl.” The Economist, May 10.
  16. Excell, Jon, and Stuart Nathan. 2010. “The Rise of Additive Manufacturing.” The Engineer, May 24.
  17. Gielen, Dolf, John Newman, and Martin Patel. 2008. “Reducing Industrial Energy Use and CO2 Emissions: The Role of Materials Science.” MRS Bulletin 33: 471–477.
  18. Glaister, Stephen, and Dan Graham. 2004. Pricing Our Roads: Vision and Reality. London: Institute of Economic Affairs and Profile Books.
  19. Global CCS Institute. 2011. Accelerating the Uptake of CCS: Industrial Use of Captured Carbon Dioxide. Docklands, Victoria, Australia: Global CCS Institute.
  20. Golden, Mark. 2013. “Global Solar Photovoltaic Industry Is Likely Now a Net Energy Producer, Stanford Researchers Find.” Stanford Report, April 2.
  21. Griggs, Jessica. 2013. “The Odd Couple.” New Scientist December 7, 46–49.
  22. Hazell, Peter. 2009. “The Asian Green Revolution.” Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute Discussion Paper.
  23. Hope, Mat. 2014. “Experts Unconvinced Latest Reforms Will Save the European Carbon Market.” Carbon Brief, January 29.
  24. IEA. 2013. Technology Roadmap: Carbon Capture and Storage. Prepared by Ellina Levina, Simon Bennett, and Sean McCoy. Paris: International Energy Agency.
  25. Jordan, Carl. 2013. Working with Nature: Resource Management for Sustainability. New York: Routledge.
  26. Jovanovic, Boyan, and Peter Rousseau. 2005. “General Purpose Technologies.” In Handbook of Economic Growth, vol. 1B, ed. Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, 1182–1224. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  27. Jowit, Juliette. 2010. “Blimps Could Replace Aircraft in Freight Transport, Say Scientists.” The Guardian, June 30. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/30/blimps-aircraft-freight (accessed January 9, 2015).
  28. Kalan, Jonathan. 2013. “Solar Ship Aims to Soar.” BBC.com, January 13. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130111-solar-ship-set-to-soar (accessed January 9, 2015).
  29. Kempener, Ruud, Paul Komor, and Anderson Hoke. 2013. Smart Grids and Renewables: A Guide for Effective Deployment. Abu Dhabi: International Renewable Energy Agency, Working Paper.
  30. Kenny, R., C. Law, and J.M. Pearce. 2010. “Towards Real Energy Economics: Energy Policy Driven by Life-Cycle Carbon Emission.” Energy Policy 38: 1969–1978.
  31. Kingsbury, Noel. 2009. Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant-Breeding. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  32. LaMonica, Martin. 2013. “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013: Additive Manufacturing.” MIT Technology Review May–June.
  33. Lancon, J., J. Wery, B. Rapidel, M. Angokaye, E. Gerardeaux, C. Gaborel, D. Ballo, and B. Fadegnon. 2007. “An Improved Methodology for Integrated Crop Management Systems.” Agronomy for Sustainable Development 27: 101–110.
  34. Langeveld, J.W.A., J. Dixon, and J.F. Jaworski. 2010. “Development Perspectives of the Biobased Economy: A Review.” Crop Science 50: 142–151.
  35. Latin, Howard. 2012. Climate Change Policy Failures: Why Conventional Mitigation Approaches Cannot Succeed. Singapore: World Scientific.
  36. Liska, Martin, Abir Al-Tabbaa, Kneale Carter, and John Fifield. 2012. “Scaled-Up Commercial Production of Reactive Magnesium Cement Pressed Masonry Units. Parts I and II.” Proceedings of the ICE - Construction Materials 165: 211–223 and 225–243.
  37. Marris, Emma. 2008. “Soya Genome Sequenced.” Nature, December 10.
  38. Munns, Rana, Richard A. James, and André Laeuchli. 2006. “Approaches to Increasing the Salt Tolerance of Wheat and Other Cereals.” Journal of Experimental Botany 57: 1025–1043.
  39. Nathan, Stuart. 2010. “Building Body Parts with 3D Printing.” The Engineer, May 24.
  40. NOAA. 2013. “NOAA’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (An Introduction).” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/ (accessed January 9, 2015).
  41. Nuffield Council on Bioethics. 2012. Emerging Biotechnologies: Technology, Choice and the Public Good. London: Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
  42. Ogando, Joseph. 2008. “Wind Energy’s Manufacturing Crunch.” Design News, September 17.
  43. Palmer, Bill. 2012. “Future Cement Part II: Carbon-Negative Cement, Converting Carbon, and Recycled Materials.” The Concrete Producer, October.
  44. Paustian, K., O. Andrén, H.H. Janzen, R. Lal, P. Smith, G. Tian, H. Tiessen, M. Van Noordwijk, and P.L. Woomer. 1997. “Agricultural Soils as a Sink to Mitigate CO2 Emissions.” Soil Use and Management 13: 230–244.
  45. Redfearn, Graham. 2013. “Warsaw’s Widening Climate Chasm Could Lead to 4C Warming.” The Guardian, November 21. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2013/nov/21/warsaw-climate-change-conference-global-warming (accessed January 9, 2015).
  46. Richardson, G.B. 1960. Information and Investment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  47. Rickaby, P.A. 1987. “Six Settlement Patterns Compared.” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 14: 193–223.
  48. Schwanitz, Valeria, Franziska Piontek, Christoph Bertram, and Gunnar Luderer. 2014. “Long-Term Climate Policy Implications of Phasing Out Fossil-Fuel Subsidies.” Energy Policy 67: 882–894.
  49. Siddig, K., A. Aguiar, H. Grethe, P. Minor, and T. Walmsley. 2014. “Impacts of Removing Fuel Import Subsidies in Nigeria on Poverty.” Energy Policy 69: 165–178.
  50. Stern, Nicholas. 2009. Blueprint for a Safer Planet. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  51. Stewart, Jon. 2012. “Lighter-Than-Air Craft Rise Again.” BBC.com, September 24. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120921-lighter-than-air-craft-rises (accessed January 9, 2015).
  52. US Department of Energy. 2013. Renewable Energy and a Smart Grid. http://www.hostgeni.com/docviewer?filePath=http%3A%2F%2Fenergy.gov%2Fsites%2Fprod%2Ffiles%2FOE_Smart_Grid_Talking_Points.pdf (accessed January 9, 2015).
  53. Vidal, John. 2013. “India’s Villagers Reap Visible Benefits from Solar Electricity Scheme.” The Guardian, March 6.
  54. Wegener, Michael. 1996. “Reduction of CO2 Emissions of Transport by Reorganisation of Urban Activities.” In Transport, Land-Use and the Environment, ed. Y. Hayashi and J. Roy, 103–124. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
  55. Welfle, Andrew, P. Gilbert, and P. Thornley. 2014. “Securing a Bioenergy Future Without Imports.” Energy Policy 68: 1–14.
  56. Worrell, Ernst, L. Price, C. Hendricks, and L. Ozawa Meida. 2001. “Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Global Cement Industry.” Annual Review of Energy and Environment 26: 303–329.
..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
18.221.249.198