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The Problem With Carbon-Cutting Programs

Posted by samzenpus on from the selling-warm dept.

Med-trump writes "Alberta's $60 million carbon-cutting program is failing, according to the latest report from the Canadian province's auditor-general, Merwan Saher. A news article in Nature adds: 'the province, despite earlier warnings, has not improved its regulatory structure — and calls the emissions estimates and the offsets themselves into question.'"

30 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. It's Alberta... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What? Do you really think the tarsands province has an interest in putting carbon emissions on its beloved oil? Or that the federal Conservative government of the corporate elite wants them to either?

    1. Re:It's Alberta... by masternerdguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not concerned. We're going to run out of fossil fuels eventually and then we'll be dragged kicking and screaming into the future.

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    2. Re:It's Alberta... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh, we'll run out of fossil fuels but it won't be for a long time yet. Canada and the US both contain so much oil in the form of tar sands and oil shale that they could become the world's premier oil exporters. Techniques for extracting these reserves are being developed that would not require strip mining so you wouldn't even know there was an oil operation going on. Sorry, but the age of oil is not over yet unless you can find another source of energy and methods of storage and transportation that are as cheap, convenient and energy dense as plain old oil, gasoline or other hydrocarbon fuels.

    3. Re:It's Alberta... by rtfa-troll · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Solar Panels....

      It's not a substitute. Oil products are incredibly convenient. They concentrate energy into a small space (compare energy density for jet fule with Li batteries one day) doen't spontaneously burn (compare with hydrogen) but it burn easily when you want it to (compare with coal / wood etc).

      However, oil is even more valuable as the base material for things such as plastics. Burning it is a true sin and our descendants are likely going to hate us for it.

      To make solar panels a direct oil substitute, fundamentally we need processes for turning electricity (+CO2 from the atmosphere and H from water) into hydrocarbons. These do exist, but most are in early research stages and/or quite inefficient. Getting them going at large scale, together with much cheaper solar panels would be great.

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    4. Re:It's Alberta... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "Techniques for extracting these reserves are being developed that ..."
      That just raises costs even more. Funny thing is, without those really really heavy subsidies fossil fuels wouldn't be so cheap as they are today. Think about it for a moment, when it was first used, the oil came from wells so close to the surface, that drilling was so simple and could be done with that "ancient" technology. Nowadays we have oil platforms, underwater pipes and transcontinental pipes, gargantuan ships travelling from one side of the globe to the other. Costs are incredibly higher now, than 100 years ago. Fossil fuels will stop being used long before we run out.

      You might argue that the technology doesn't exist. Well, you might find it shocking, but people don't invent things just because they "had an idea". There has to be a need for something, before it's invented. Oil is already becoming expensive, not expensive enough to ground aircraft and force ships to switch back to steam power, but enough to make people take another look at alternatives.

    5. Re:It's Alberta... by chudnall · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is exactly the line of reasoning that explains why every government program inevitably gets bigger and bigger.

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    6. Re:It's Alberta... by schnikies79 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You can do a fractional distillation on crude and separate it into it's various types, tar, diesel, octane, propane, etc. You can also take long chains and "crack" them (break the chains) and create more of whatever you want, as long as it has a smaller chain.

      Most refineries crack now and can get up to 50% octane from a barrel of oil. Without cracking it is less than 10%.

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      Gone!
    7. Re:It's Alberta... by dr2chase · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You seem to ignore the role of demand and scarcity; if the price of oil rises to $200/barrel, there are extraction methods that would be profitable, that are not profitable now. The technology does not "cause" the price, that is true, but in this case it only lowers the price from a very high level to one that is somewhat more tolerable -- the energy return on energy invested is not nearly as good. I assume, unless we get some really nasty climate-related bite in the ass, that we will eventually get all the oil that can be gotten, but not necessarily at anything we would call a "low" price.

      And if that price exceeds the cost of alternatives for obtaining transportation (non-oil electricity + batteries; bicycles for short trips; robot-assisted taxi/carpooling), then we might leave it in the ground after all.

    8. Re:It's Alberta... by khallow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Energy is king.

      Can't emphasize this enough. For example, if you need the elements carbon and hydrogen (basic building blocks of hydrocarbon chemistry) and you have a vast amount of cheap electricity available, then you can pull both from atmosphere. Electrolysis gets you water and heating wood in a reducing atmosphere (the trees which you can light up with LEDs) gets you carbon. Running hot hydrogen over carbon gets you methane. I don't know electricity-based tricks for going from methane to ethene (but they're there), but the latter is apparently the building block for most plastics.

    9. Re:It's Alberta... by SnarfQuest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's only 20 years of fossil fuel left in the ground. At least, that's what we were told in the '70s, the 80's, and the 90's. With oil usage increasing as much as it has been lately, mostly because of China, I'd guess that we're now down to 20 years left.

      --
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    10. Re:It's Alberta... by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 3, Informative

      To add to the parent there are several processes that will turn carbon based items into various hydrocarbons that have been used. The main ones I am aware of are:
      Fischer-Tropsch process
      Thermal depolymerization
      Staged reforming
      Gas to liquids
      Biomass to liquid
      Coal liquefaction

      If we really wanted to get serious about renewable fuels in the US we would quit wasting our time with corn to ethanol and setup some biomass to liquid hydrocarbon plants.

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      Time to offend someone
    11. Re:It's Alberta... by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, for some values of "evenutally," maybe. But we still have something like two-thirds of all discovered fossil fuels left to burn, and we've not begun to investigate the arctic circle, the antarctic basin, some deeper reservoirs, methane clathrates on the ocean floors, permafrost hydrocarbons, limestone catalysis, and some other things I forget.

      I was curious about this a while back and one of my wife's uncles worked in the oil industry for years as a geologist so I asked him shortly after he retired, about 10 year ago. At that time I got the following numbers as the best estimates of the total oil that the world held:
      6 trillion barrels as the estimated total oil the world ever held
      4 trillion barrels as the maximum recoverable amount of oil at any cost
      3 trillion barrels as the actual recoverable amount of oil at a profit
      1 trillion barrels as the total so far consumed of the initial 6 trillion, thus 2 trillion are still recoverable at a profit

      These number may vary but seem to be reasonable based off of things I have read in other sources

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    12. Re:It's Alberta... by russotto · · Score: 3, Insightful

      oil subsidies? wtf? oil is fucking cheap. it's TAXED to a level where some other sources make seemingly sense if those are not taxed as highly.

      For politically incorrect sources of energy, you take all the direct costs. Then you add in the costs of regulation (never mind that they're largely already included in the price). Then you add in some amount you made up to cover conventional pollution. Then you add a bunch more to cover CO2. Then you add in the cost of any military presence you can, by logic chains strong or tenuous, connect to oil. Then you add in the cost of road congestion, lung disease, oil worker pensions, and anything else you can come up with. Then you double all this to provide a margin of error.

      For politically correct sources of energy, you take the current costs (ignoring the huge direct subsidies and the fact that the providers are losing money anyway), and project them downward for technological improvement.

      And still it's a close call.

  2. Not much of a surprise by ShakaUVM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not much of a surprise. Kyoto was designed (intentionally or not) as a subsidy that would allow business as usual while just writing a check to Eastern Europe. The baseline CO2 levels were set at 1990 levels, which was right before the collapse of the USSR and the resultant massive decrease in their CO2 output levels. (Likewise, our CO2 production has decreased since 2007 since our economy has tanked.)

    The various carbon markets and carbon trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud. It comes as absolutely no surprise that Alberta's emissions trading scheme has run into identical problems.

    While carbon trading schemes are admirable in their attempt to internalize external costs, in practice they're just not a very good idea.

    1. Re:Not much of a surprise by vlm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The various carbon markets and carbon trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud

      Equally true statement for all other markets if you cut out the word "carbon"

      The various markets and trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud

      Its just another crooked tax and intermediary scheme to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. What a huge surprise.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    2. Re:Not much of a surprise by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I wouldn't classify myself as a climate change denier, but I don't believe the world as we know it can get a political fix for it. In order for the world to terraform itself(Yes, the solution is a form of terraforming, and could be useful for Mars in hundreds of years), we must get enough of the countries agreeing with each other. Right now we have problems just agreeing not to kill each other. Even some of the best governments have corruption in them too. Do we want to go,"More power to the governments!"? To me it is no surprise that the guy who rose awareness to the issue is a politician himself because it is a power grab move.

      --
      God spoke to me
    3. Re:Not much of a surprise by guises · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not much of a surprise. Kyoto was designed (intentionally or not) as a subsidy that would allow business as usual while just writing a check to Eastern Europe.

      Because Eastern European countries have such great international bargaining clout? Come on. It's not a subsidy, it's not a conspiracy, it's an effort to do something good about something bad. They picked a year with a target that they thought they could hit. Obviously some places would be effected by this to a greater degree than others.

      Doubtless there was some weedling and self-centered manipulation going on, so what? Whenever you have a broad and painful treaty like this there will always be someone hurting more than others - you make it as fair as you can and then you suck it up, because it has to be done regardless. My own country, the United States, pollutes far more by every metric than any of the signatories of the Kyoto treaty so we, to my chagrin, decided to take our ball and go home. Hopefully we'll step up and own to some of the problems that we've caused with the next one.

    4. Re:Not much of a surprise by khallow · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is why carbon offsets and caps don't work. Nobody is encouraged to stop polluting.

      I don't think you get the point. A carbon market is intended to cover the externality of carbon dioxide emissions. If it does so and the market participants don't change their behavior, then that is an acceptable outcome. Behavior modification is not an indication that the system isn't working, it's rather an indication that the uses of fossil fuels or whatever are important enough to pay the additional cost.

  3. Alberta tar sands by mspohr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Alberta is the home of the tar sands... the dirtiest source of petroleum. Do you actually think they are interested in cutting carbon emissions?

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    1. Re:Alberta tar sands by JWW · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Dirtiest source??! I'd say they'd have to work really hard to be dirtier than deep sea drilling has been.

    2. Re:Alberta tar sands by compro01 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Dirtiest source??! I'd say they'd have to work really hard to be dirtier than deep sea drilling has been.

      Oil sands extraction produces massive quantities of contaminated (lead, arsenic, mercury, ammonia, naphthenic acids, and other fun things) water which is stored in tailings "ponds" (they're really more like lakes) which currently cover about 170 square kilometers.

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    3. Re:Alberta tar sands by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I live in Alberta and I can assure you that tailings ponds are still in use.

    4. Re:Alberta tar sands by Rary · · Score: 5, Informative

      We don't use tailings ponds anymore.

      Bullshit. The Government of Alberta's own tar sands propaganda site backs up GPs claim of 170 square kilometers of tailings ponds— that's about two Manhattans. It goes on to state that "(e)fforts continue to develop new tailings performance criteria, management technologies and practical solutions to reduce and potentially eliminate tailings ponds as we know them today." Still, tailings ponds are expected to expand to about 250 square kilometers— almost three Manhattans— by 2020.

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    5. Re:Alberta tar sands by camperdave · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Manhattan is far more of an environmental hazard zone than a tailings pond.

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  4. Offsets are problematic by Goonie · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those that don't bother to read TFA, the one-sentence summary is that "offsets", where rather than paying the tax companies pay for credits obtained for emission-cutting programs in agriculture or in developing countries, are often dubious because the "offsets" are not properly audited and often just pay for activities that would have occurred anyway without the subsidy This is relatively easy to fix. Just tighten up the rules on offsets. It doesn't damn emissions trading in general.

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    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
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    1. Re:Offsets are problematic by SoftwareArtist · · Score: 5, Informative
      Here is what the article actually says about it:

      What are the problems with the credit methods?

      Lax verification for carbon-offset projects has been a problem for several schemes. For the credit-creating projects to be effective at reducing overall greenhouse-gas emissions, the scheme operators are supposed to approve only projects that would otherwise not have gone ahead. The auditor-general criticized the Alberta Department of Environment and Water for allowing carbon credits for emissions-reducing activities that have become common practice.

      The Alberta report found a lack of standards for how agricultural credits were verified — not one of the credits the auditors checked could be confirmed. It also pointed out that there was no standardized, accurate method for measuring the emissions from oil-sands tailing ponds, which store contaminated water, clay, sand and bitumen from oil-sands processing.

      Many opponents of emissions trading programmes also argue that companies are likely to purchase carbon offsets instead of reducing emissions by adopting new technologies or changing their operating practices.

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  5. Re:Of course... by wisnoskij · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That fact remains that the air is completely horrible in China. Sure it is not a permanent or perfect solution to move pollution to china but in the short term, at least, it greatly improves our quality of life.

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  6. Definition of failure by Livius · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The program may be failing...

    and that may mean the policy is succeeding.

  7. A link about "really, really heavy subsidies".... by mevets · · Score: 3, Informative

    Next time you are standing on a road, have a look down and contemplate what you are standing on, why it is there, how it got there, and who paid for it.

    Who paid for the crusades in Iraq? Who benefitted? Why? While we are at it, what is the cost of the middle east policy? Who benefits? Why?

    Without even jumping into climate destruction ( although, again, who will pay for it? Who benefitted? Why? ), there is the 'other' environmental disaster - air pollution. How much does it cost? Who pays for it? Why?

    Subsidy doesn't quite describe the situation; perhaps "hand out" or "graft" are closer to the mark.

  8. Reagan's cap & trade works. by TapeCutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why not simply REQUIRE the reductions where technically possible (forget about 'cost efficiency') and update the requirements as new technology arrives.

    1. Because it is disconnected from the physical limits of the environment.
    2. Because it would require a myriad of standards, each one of which will be twisted by it's fight with industry. (ie: it makes "divide and conquer" an obvious strategy for industry)

    I'm not saying that standards enforced by law are a bad thing, I just don't think they're the best solution to such a broad problem. In the early 90's Reagan was proud to be a leading supporter of the international cap and trade treaty that is now in place for sulphur emission. As usual, economic alarmists of the day all started screaming about an economic apocalypse. The treaty was signed by most industrial nations, the economic apocalypse failed to materialise and acid rain has gone away as a major environmental problem. As you say this is how it always goes, at least it has been in the 50yrs I've been watching. Some other examples are, lead in petrol, asbestos, clean air act(s), DDT, tobacco health warnings, the list is long and the propaganda on every one of these issues from industry has been without exception utterly immoral.

    International cap and trade treaties are by far the best long term solution to AGW and many other tragedies of the commons (such as overfishing)...
    Cap - Because there is time dependent physical limit to the resource.
    Trade - Because capitalist markets are the most efficient way to distribute a finite resource.

    The size of the cap is the only detail that is rightfully determined by science, the rest of the detail is politics and accounting. Will greed and fraud occur? - Of course, it does everywhere else.

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