Marc Jacobson, apparently. In his recent paper “Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security,” the Stanford professor incorporates findings from a variety of studies to rank clean energy technologies by their lifetime carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy produced. Jacobson’s calculations include not only direct emissions, but also indirect emissions due to construction, mining, transportation, and other factors.

The addition of indirect emissions produces some compelling results. Even though coal with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has few direct emissions, its overall emissions are over 80 times greater than those of the least-emitting technology, wind. In fact, every other clean energy technology considered in the paper – wind, photovoltaic, geothermal, tidal, wave, hydro, and nuclear – emits less than coal with CCS. Coal with CCS emits about as much as a natural gas power plant, roughly 60% less than coal without CCS.

The findings are important for all nations considering how to invest scarce resources for cutting emissions, but perhaps especially for the World Bank, as the steward of the proposed Clean Technology Fund (see David Wheeler’s latest discussion of this).

Jacobson doesn’t factor in the cost of each technology, but for policymakers deciding where to focus research and development, the implication is clear: coal with CCS is less “clean” than is often claimed. Rich and developing countries – and those designing various clean technology funds – would do well to take note.

See below for a graph of Jacobson’s estimates, read his paper, or watch a presentation of his findings.

(From Jacobson’s presentation slides. The blue bar is the lower bound of the estimated emissions; the red bar is the upper bound. All emissions values referenced above are the average of the lower and upper bound.)

Go to carma.org/blog/earth/ to learn more, or check out the screenshots below to get a taste of CARMA’s latest incarnation.

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.

This project no longer makes any sense. In fact, it is obsolete by the IFC’s own standards. Here’s the rationale provided by the IFC, along with the current reality.

1. Claim: The IFC should use scarce international resources for the Mundra project because its efficient, supercritical coal-combustion technology will provide a model for India. According to the IFC: “The project is the first private sector power project in India to be based on the energy efficient supercritical technology.”

Reality: Wrong on both counts. No model is needed, because several other private- and public-sector supercritical plants are already under construction or planned. These include Sipat and Akaltara (Chattisgarh State), Sasan (Madhya Pradesh), and Shahapur (Maharashtra). Figure 1, drawn from our CARMA database, shows the percentage of planned Indian power capacity other than Mundra that will employ supercritical technology during the next five years. For the public and private sectors combined, supercritical capacity without Mundra will be around 60% of new capacity in 2013. For the private sector, it will be over 70%.

Conclusion: The rationale for Mundra is obsolete. India’s public and private sectors are moving to supercritical technology anyway, without IFC subsidies. A big driver is the rapidly-rising price of coal, which puts a premium on combustion efficiency.

2. Claim: The IFC must support Mundra, because India has no scalable, economically-feasible alternative for baseload power. And in any case, India has a lot of cheap coal and should exploit it.

Reality: Wrong again. India does have a scalable, economically feasible alternative to coal. As Figure 2 shows, the region near Mundra has huge solar potential and is one of the most sparsely-settled areas in India. Baseload solar power with thermal storage for 24-hour operation is now technically feasible, as I have noted in a recent paper and blog. As for exploiting Indian coal, Mundra will use coal imported from Indonesia and other countries at rapidly-rising cost.

For the IFC, solar thermal power is also financially feasible for two major reasons.

• Coal’s previous cost advantage has largely vanished. Fuel and construction costs for supercritical coal-fired power plants have been escalating rapidly. Both costs have at least doubled since 2005, nearly eliminating coal’s cost advantage over solar thermal power. Since completing my previously-cited paper, I have incorporated these changes into new production cost estimates for supercritical coal and solar thermal power. The gap is now less than one penny per kilowatt hour (8.23 cents for solar thermal vs. 7.65 cents for supercritical coal (up from 4.20 cents two years ago). Power from Mundra will never be sold at the rate advertised on IFC’s website (5.6 cents/kWh), because this would guarantee bankruptcy in short order.
• Financing from international clean technology funds can fill the remaining cost gap. Since a solar thermal plant emits no carbon, it qualifies for European Union offset payments under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The current CDM payment rate is about $15 per ton of CO2 averted, and solar thermal capacity equivalent to Mundra’s (4,000 MW) would annually avert 29.7 million tons of CO2 produced by the CDM’s “baseline case” (a low-efficiency subcritical plant). This would qualify the solar thermal plant for $445 million/year in CDM payments — enough to recover most of the total cost difference between solar thermal and supercritical coal before the current CDM arrangement expires in 2012. The rest can easily be covered by the World Bank Group’s new Clean Technology Fund, financed by donor-country taxpayers.

In short, IFC’s proposed Tata Ultra Mega project is obsolete, unnecessary, ultra-dangerous for the planet, and mega-dangerous for the environmental reputations of the IFC and the World Bank Group. Does anyone really believe that donor-country taxpayers will continue supporting the Bank Group if it takes billions for the Clean Technology Fund with one hand and invests billions in coal-fired monsters with the other? Let’s get serious here. The IFC’s Board should take Ban Ki-Moon’s Bali declaration of a planetary emergency seriously, vote no on Tata Ultra Mega, leave coal-fired power behind, and commit to renewable power. They will find a willing partner in the Indian Government, which has already begun piloting solar thermal power and would undoubtedly welcome a big push on renewables.

Figure 1: Planned Supercritical Coal Capacity in India Without Tata Mundra

(% of Total Planned Annual Capacity Installation, Private and Total)
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Figure 2: Solar Power Potential in the Region Near Mundra

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Less-appreciated, perhaps, is the fact that China, India and other developing nations also blinked. For the first time, they accepted the principle that verified reduction of their emissions should be considered in a future agreement. From a global perspective, this was a victory for common sense. As Kevin Ummel and I note in a recent paper, unrestricted emissions from developing countries are growing so rapidly that they will create a climate crisis in this generation, even if developed-country emissions fall to zero immediately.

And the Europeans blinked as well, although their rhetoric remained aggressive to the end. After insisting on quantitative targets throughout the conference, they grudgingly accepted a non-specific commitment to future emissions reductions, and abandoned their threat to boycott US-sponsored talks among major carbon emitters. This was simply realistic, because the deal that must be struck will include many more elements than emissions targets.

Everyone ultimately blinked on Bali because they recognized several uncomfortable truths: The global stakes are mortal; time is short; success depends on universal participation; and getting everyone onboard will be impossible if negotiations focus only on emissions reduction targets. A sustainable global compact to halt global warming will also require provisions for clean technology development, accelerating global adoption of clean technology; and assisting poor countries that will be hard-hit by inevitable climate change.

Negotiating the global compact will not be simple, because each country faces different opportunities, risks and costs (For a comprehensive look, see “Country stakes in climate change negotiations : two dimensions of vulnerability“). To cite a few examples among many: Some countries (most notably the US and China) are so dependent on coal-fired power that a very rapid transition to clean energy will be wrenching and costly. They will not join a compact that threatens their economic and political stability. Many developing countries have huge renewable-energy potential, but it can only be tapped with developed-country support. This should include relaxing intellectual property laws to permit low-cost deployment of innovative technologies, but too much relaxation will eliminate the profit incentive that drives innovation in the first place. And for developed countries, the cost of supporting clean technology development will have to be weighed against their own transition costs, as well as the costs of assisting developing countries with adaptation to climate change.

Everyone blinked at the Bali Conference, opening the way for serious work on the global compact. The North and South are now fully aware of their interdependency. Each side emits enough carbon to create a climate catastrophe, and each faces such heavy transition costs that accepting them will require a new vision of global development. The North has the financial and scientific resources to support the compact, but carbon mitigation by the South is the key to making it work in the long run. The compact will have to reflect a host of country-specific benefits and costs associated with emissions reduction, accelerating the transition to clean technology, and financing adaptation to climate change.

While many uncertainties remain, one thing is certain: In forging the compact, this generation will shoulder a huge cost to protect future generations. And the sacrifice will only be acceptable if the global compact respects strict principles of accountability and transparency. To forge a meaningful compact, the international community has to know where carbon emissions are coming from; who is accountable for them; and what concrete steps are being taken to reduce emissions.

The demand for accountability and transparency defines an action plan that we can start implementing now. To establish accountability, the UN should immediately develop a global inventory of emissions from all critical sources, including deforestation. This inventory should identify specific sources (e.g. power plants, cement mills, motor vehicle fleets, land-clearing operations), and the organizations that are accountable for them. To ensure transparency, the emissions inventory should be disclosed to the global community on an accessible, easy-to-use, constantly-updated website.

At the Center for Global Development, we have attempted to catalyze this international effort by launching CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action) at www.carma.org. CARMA is the first global carbon disclosure site for the power sector, which produces over 25% of all carbon emissions. It provides easily-accessible emissions and power data for 50,000+ power plants, 20,000+ power companies, and 200,000 locales. With very limited resources, we have established an initial benchmark for global accountability and transparency. Now we believe that the international community should step up. The United Nations, or a consortium of donor nations, should immediately apply the same principles to building a comprehensive public emissions inventory that will provide a key foundation for negotiating the global compact. It’s the first step on a long road, and time is short. Let’s get started.

Our goal is to put anyone in the world just a few clicks away from complete, tailored information about carbon emissions for any plant, any company, and any locale. CARMA provides data for all power facilities and companies, whether they are entirely coal-fueled or completely reliant on renewable energy sources. We hope that CARMA will equip millions of concerned global citizens – consumers, investors, political leaders, managers, professionals, and community organizers – with the information they need to take action and build a low-carbon future.

Our own professional experience, as well as plentiful research, has shown that public disclosure of critical information can have powerful effects on environmental performance. We believe that the time is ripe for rapid reduction of carbon emissions, and CARMA is intended to be our contribution to this effort. We’re particularly concerned at the Center for Global Development, because global warming threatens to undermine the poverty-reduction efforts of many developing countries.

CARMA includes more than 50,000 power plants, 4,000 power companies, and nearly 200,000 geographic regions in every country on Earth. Users can view carbon emissions data for the year 2000, the present, and future plans. And all of CARMA’s data is updated quarterly to reflect changes in plant ownership and planned construction. We encourage you to learn more About CARMA, explore the site, sign up for our newsletter, tell your friends, and link to our blog — the main source for analysis and news from the CARMA team. And we want to hear from you. How are you using the data? How can the site be improved? Let us know.

We hope you find CARMA useful in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming. The information is available to make it happen — now it’s up to all of us to take action. Let’s get to work.