Last week’s Washington Post feature on CARMA focuses on massive growth in Chinese emissions. Although pollution wasn’t big news once the Olympics started, this year China’s power sector will emit more CO2 than the US power sector for the first time. Furthermore, rapid construction of coal-fired plants is wiping out any improvements in emissions intensity. But China will (sort of) head in the right direction, on carbon intensity, as it doubles electricity production over the next decade: the share of fossil-fuel generation will decrease from 83% to 73%.

What about the rest of the world? Well, in India the share of fossil fuel plants in India will only increase by 1% over the next decade and decrease in overall intensity, but generating capacity will triple over the same period and 77% of capacity will depend on fossil fuels.

In Europe, great wealth, soaring environmental rhetoric, and world-leading technologies suggest the region should be leading a massive push to replace fossil plants with renewable energy technologies. In fact, Europeans have some explaining to do, as the continent as a whole is poised to increase the share of fossil-fuel power from 47% to 53% at the same time governments are reconsidering the costs of subsidizing renewables. This certainly won’t help things.

And in the US, despite permitting delays and cancellations of coal-fired power plants, the fossil fuel share is set for a 2% increase, to 71%. Public support for renewable energy notwithstanding, the unstable investment climate caused by a Congressional standoff on investment tax credits is delaying rapid development of the sector.

In sum, the world is still heading in the wrong direction as far as the atmosphere is concerned. As IPCC head R.K. Pachauri was quoted as saying in a Washington Post op-ed last week, “The cities, power plants and factories we build in the next seven years will shape our climate in mid-century.” Postponing a push toward renewable energy will make the inevitable switch vastly more expensive than it has to be, in terms of the sunk costs of investments in fossil fuel technologies as well as the cost of any climate-related economic damage. These costs make the current lack of political will to reduce dependence on carbon-intensive energy seem staggeringly myopic.

But this will no doubt change. Already, India’s government is concerned about National Thermal Power Corporation’s CARMA, and that emissions disclosure on CARMA will hinder fundraising for coal power plants. Here in the US, major Wall Street banks are pricing CO2 in their lending models. But the question remains whether political leaders worldwide will act soon enough to make a difference.

We’ll keep you updated when CARMA 3.0 comes out next year!

I want to make clear that the numbers discussed here and in the articles referenced above are not from a CGD “report” on India’s carbon emissions. The data in question come from the Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) global database (online at www.carma.org), which provides estimated carbon emissions for power plants and companies in every country - not just India.

Much of CARMA’s data for Indian power plants comes directly from the Ministry of Power’s own emissions database. As part of an effort to secure funding through the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism, the Ministry has disclosed information obtained from companies and plants since late 2006, and we have commended them for doing so. The latest version of that data provides power generation and carbon emissions at the plant level for fiscal year 2006-2007 and is used in CARMA 2.0. So far, we have only matched a portion of the plants in the Indian database to the global one used in CARMA; we hope to complete that matching process for CARMA 3.0. Our policy is to report the most recently disclosed data whenever they are available. In this case, that means we must rely upon data for FY 2006-2007.

CARMA directly incorporates publically disclosed data for 16 of NTPC’s 21 plants operating in FY 2006-2007. For the remaining five plants, CARMA’s statistical model provides estimates. Since, upon closer inspection, the Power Ministry actually reports information for these plants, we are provided with an unexpected opportunity to compare the CARMA estimates to the disclosed numbers. For the five plants in question, the CARMA model overestimated power production by 3.8% and overestimated total emissions by 9.7%. Since these plants make up only 30% of NTPC’s total generating capacity, the overall discrepancy between CARMA’s numbers and NTPC’s disclosed totals for FY 2006-2007 are very low (see table below).

NTPC reports that the company’s power production for FY 2007-2008 was about 200 million MWh. For the purposes of CARMA, however, we can only report figures for 2006-2007; the Power Ministry has not yet released the carbon emissions data for FY 2007-2008. It’s possible to generate an estimate, though, since NTPC has reported a coal requirement of 125 million metric tons. Burning that much coal would release about 196 million U.S. tons of CO2, and NTPC also has a number of gas plants that would add to the total. Since NTPC knows precisely how much fuel their plants are consuming and the specific calorific value of that fuel, they should be able to ascertain the accuracy of that estimate. In any event, we’ll know for sure when the Power Ministry releases new data, probably in December.

I also want to examine NTPC’s claims regarding “efficiency” - in this case, the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of power produced. The assertion made in a number of articles is derived from the company’s own internal analysis, utilizing (old) CARMA 1.0 data that (for Indian plants) relied upon reported emissions and power output for FY 2005-2006. The annual totals for that period, as reported to the Power Ministry by NTPC, were about 165 million MWh and 166 million U.S. tons CO2. The company proceeded to substitute power production for 2007-2008 while retaining the emissions figure from 2005-2006. The resulting carbon intensity (CO2 per unit of power) was then compared to other power companies generating more than 125 million MWh per year after 1) removing from consideration companies relying on fossil fuel for less than 50% of power generation and 2) stripping the remaining companies of any carbon-free power plants. NTPC calls the resulting measure “normalized CO2 intensity.”

NTPC’s pairing of power production from 2007-2008 with emissions data from 2005-2006 resulted in an artificially low carbon intensity. I’ve re-created NTPC’s analysis, correcting for this error and using more recent data from CARMA 2.0. The table below shows the results. I’ve included a column showing “unadjusted” CO2 intensity that doesn’t employ NTPC’s step of stripping companies of their carbon-free facilities (nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, etc.).

NTPC is middle-of-the-pack on either measure. This shouldn’t be surprising given the company’s heavy reliance on coal. The companies ranked higher generally utilize more natural gas (which is significantly cleaner than coal) and/or supercritical combustion technology (which is marginally cleaner than the technology employed in NTPC’s plants to date). NTPC does fare quite well when compared to Chinese power companies.

Finally, we shouldn’t let carbon intensity distract us from the big picture. If we are truly serious about avoiding dangerous and rapid climate change, probabilistic modeling suggests an aggressive 2020 target would aim for a global total of 25 gigatons of CO2. For the sake of argument, let’s imagine a world where developed countries and their enormous emissions disappear overnight. This leaves the developing world with the entire 25 Gton CO2 allowance to “play with.” Recent modeling by the Energy Information Administration suggests that total energy production (all uses, not just electricity) in the developing world will be about 100 billion MWh in 2020. Even if we assume profligate, Northern societies eliminate all emissions in a dozen years, meeting the global emissions target would entail an average carbon intensity across the developing world of about 550 pounds of CO2 per MWh - lower than even the most efficient gas plant can reach today. No efficiency improvement will ever reduce the emissions from coal power to anywhere near this level.

It is quite reasonable to decry the inequity of this reality, and there is no shortage of good arguments to that effect. After all, on a per capita basis, India’s power sector emissions are just 6% of those in the United States and 25% of those in China. These considerations must be central to any global agreement to finance clean technology and combat climate change. But let’s not avoid the truth: No matter how efficiently we burn coal, it can only lead to disaster. And India, perhaps more than any other country, will bear the brunt of climate change.

We have also created a Version Tracker page that lists the release dates and changes made to CARMA as we go along. We hope you explore and enjoy the new information and, as always, I encourage you to stay informed of our work by signing up for our newsletter on the right side of the page.

A quick preview: The new data show continuing rapid growth in power-related emissions, especially in China — but also in Europe and the United States. Marginal improvements in plant efficiency are being swamped by the sheer scale of expansion; CARMA 2.0 includes information on nearly 6,500 plants that are planned for construction in the future. And on a slightly lighter (but still serious) note, Antarctica, the last carbon-free continent in CARMA 1.0, now joins the ranks of the emitters.

To be notified when CARMA 2.0 is officially released, join our newsletter on the right side of the homepage.

The authors of MIT’s comprehensive Future of Coal study wrote in 2007 that

Coal use will increase under any foreseeable scenario because it is cheap and abundant … [and] CO2 capture and sequestration (CCS) is the critical enabling technology that would reduce CO2 emissions significantly while also allowing coal to meet the world’s pressing energy needs. …

The priority objective with respect to coal should be the successful large-scale demonstration of the technical, economic, and environmental performance of the technologies that make up all of the major components of a large-scale integrated CCS system – capture, transportation and storage.

Unfortunately, CCS pilot projects hoped to be operational before 2014 are very few and far between. In January, the Department of Energy cancelled the FutureGen pilot project because of cost overruns, and BP and Rio Tinto recently abandoned CCS plans in Australia because “rock formations wouldn’t seal in carbon dioxide.” To date no one knows what will happen to CO2 pumped underground in the US at volumes that rival the amount of natural gas transported each day, assuming suitable locations are found. Note also that new coal-fired plants need to be using the technology on a massive scale by 2020 to make a serious dent in CO2 emissions.

But the feasibility of CCS in a meaningful timeframe is not the only obstacle the technology faces. The Future of Coal financial model depends on a $30/ton CO2 charge to achieve cost parity with traditional coal-fired plants, not counting coal price rises in the year since the report came out. That’s right, not only is the technology completely unproven and unavailable in a usable timeframe, the electricity from CCS coal plants will always be more expensive than electricity from the most efficient coal plants out there today. Rapidly growing emitters in the developing world – i.e. China and India – will balk at a permanently higher energy costs, and keep building dozens of dirty plants every year.

Of course, $30/ton is also pretty close to the conservative $35/ton charge my colleague David Wheeler writes is necessary to cause a switch to environmentally benign solar thermal power generation, and is in the middle of the range of carbon charges expected by major US investment banks. Let’s not forget that strategic investments of $4-8 billion dollars by the World Bank’s Clean Technology Fund, or the Chinese, or the US government, could rapidly push the cost of solar thermal power down the cost curve as it scales up using proven technology.

And then there’s wind. The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) 20% Wind Energy by 2030 scenario points out that the price of wind-generated electricity has dropped by 80% in the last 20 years as the technology has improved. At an incremental cost of $43 billion for ramping up wind installations and upgrading the transmission network beyond the massive investment needed already – not counting the value of avoided emissions under a carbon trading scheme – the DOE estimates that the US can feasibly generate 20% of its electricity from wind by 2030.

This is not to say that there aren’t challenges to rolling out renewable energy technologies, from supplying baseload power to simply building the infrastructure on a massive scale. But these are not insurmountable problems, though Congress is not making things any easier.

The bottom line is that wind and other renewable energy technologies are well understood, are as affordable as CCS would be whenever it gets off the ground (in a decade?), and approach the cost of traditional coal power already. Looking at it this way, CCS may be the best kind of vaporware we can hope for in this situation: obsolete on delivery.

CGD decided to focus on the power sector because it accounts for the most CO2 emissions (26%), and because it’s better-documented any other CO2-emitting sector. With that being said, it was no cakewalk to process emissions data from numerous sources, and we recognize that our findings are still far from perfect.

CARMA began with plant-level CO2 emissions publicly disclosed online by the US, EU, Canada, and India. This initial data source was combined with two others: the World Electric Power Plants Database (WEPP, a subscription service), and country-level power production data from the US Energy Information Agency. A fuzzy-logic algorithm, suggested by CGD colleague David Roodman, was used to stitch together the data sources by matching the (frequently inconsistent) identifier codes. The fuzzy-logic algorithm, along with a painstaking visual analysis, formed the basis for our project.

CARMA ended up with 51,373 total power facilities. Of those plants, 26,034 emit no CO2, and 2,922 have publicly-reported CO2 emissions. The CO2 for the remaining 22,417 plants are estimates based on a regression analysis of 2,469 CO2-emitting facilities in the US. As for power production, the public data sources account for 4,071 facilities (3,869 in the US, 202 in India). The power production for the remaining 47,302 plants are estimates based on the following 5-step process:

1. Estimate capacity factors using a regression analysis based on US facilities
2. Multiply estimated capacity factors by WEPP-reported operational plant capacities
3. Combine estimated and reported power to obtain total power production by energy source for each country
4. For each energy source, divide the total by the corresponding total from the US Energy Information Agency to obtain an adjustment factor
5. For each country and energy source, multiply each estimated power output by the relevant adjustment factor (if the power output isn’t publicly-reported)

A plant’s power production in megawatt-hours (MWh) is the product of its capacity factor (% of potential capacity actually used), its capacity (MW), and its potential operating hours per year (usually 24 * 365 = 8,760). Emissions intensity for each plant is calculated by dividing CO2 emissions by power production.

CARMA uses regression models fitted to plant-level variables in a large US dataset. We estimate emissions and power capacity for plants from very detailed information about their capacity, generator age, combustion technology, and energy sources. CARMA’s plant-level emissions and power reports are long-run average estimates based on facilities under standard operating conditions and with similar variables to plants in the US dataset.

To attach geographic coordinates to plants, Kevin and David sifted through several sources, including the US EPA’s eGRID database, MaxMind’s World Cities database, and various European public disclosure databases. CARMA’s goal was not to provide precise geographic coordinates for local mapping, but to allow for regional- and global-scale mapping to reveal broad patterns in the spatial distribution of plants. Another fuzzy-logic algorithm was used to match city names from the WEPP database to the MaxMind cities database. All said and done, about 60% of all plants in CARMA have coordinates. As it states in the working paper, “the geographic totals in CARMA do not measure emissions related to the consumption of people within a region; they simply measure emissions produced by power plants physically located within that region”.

As part of this, GWIPLE, my synagogue and a nearby Presbyterian church will be hosting an interfaith forum tomorrow (Wed, April 30) on mountaintop removal mining and a Dominion Resources Inc.’s proposed coal-fired plant in Wise County, VA., which would have emissions nearly equivalent to the entire power sector of Jordan and would be fueled with coal obtained by blowing up one of the oldest and most bilogically diverse mountain ranges in the world.  

Steve Mufson, energy correspondent for the Washington Post, will serve as moderator. We will have a speaker from the Sierra Club, and one from the newly created American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the latest incarnation of the coal industry’s $35 million spin machine.  

It should be a lively session! All are welcome and fellow bloggers are invited to help spread the word.