For the time being, there will be no change to the data on the site, which remains unchanged from the CARMA 2.0 release in August, 2008. Our hope is to make the upgraded database public within six months.

Check back with the CARMA blog for updates as the new database comes together.

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.)

Nearly two years after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to determine whether greenhouse gases (GHGs) pose a threat to peoples’ health or welfare – the first step toward regulation — the EPA this week issued a draft rule on a national GHG registry:

In general, EPA proposes that suppliers of fossil fuels or industrial greenhouse gases, manufacturers of vehicles and engines, and facilities that emit 25,000 metric tons or more per year of GHG emissions submit annual reports to EPA.

This is an important step forward: you can’t manage what you don’t measure. But merely collecting the data won’t be enough. Similar reporting requirements have applied to U.S. power plants since 1996 and, in theory at least, the information has been publicly available. But actually using that data is anything but straightforward. The U.S. government is not alone in failing to make this data easily accessible: in Europe, a cottage industry has sprung up to make sense of data from the EU’s Emissions Trading System.

Two years ago, CGD launched Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA.org) to address the urgent need for globally consistent, reliable data on emissions, starting with the power sector, which accounts for about a quarter of all emissions worldwide. CARMA provides information on the reported or estimated emissions of some 50,000 power plants around the world, plus plant ownership and aggregated firm-level emissions through Google Maps, Google Earth, an application programming interface (API), and spreadsheets. CARMA uses government-collected plant-level emissions data whenever we can find it, including in the United States, EU and India. Not surprisingly, the numbers get a lot more attention and use on CARMA than when they are buried in a hard-to-find and hard-to-use government spread sheets.

Ultimately, for the world to get a grip on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, verified up-to-date information on where the emissions come from will be crucial, not only for the power sector but also for industrial processes (cement plants are a major source), land use change (both deforestation and agriculture), livestock, transportation and commercial and residential buildings. This global monitoring effort will be larger than anything we at CGD expect to be able to provide. It is urgently needed and should be among the commitments that nations make at the international climate conference in Copenhagen in December. A plan by Cisco and NASA to design a monitoring system called “Planetary Skin” is a welcome development and we look forward to hearing more about it.

Until such a system is up and running, the additional data that will come from the EPA and other government reporting efforts will be a boon to CARMA and other non-governmental public information disclosure exercises. And we hope that CARMA will be a useful example of the importance and power of making the data readily accessible in a form that people can use.

Here’s an example of the power of CARMA to yield valuable information. The proposed EPA rule will apply to U.S. facilities that produce more than 25,000 tons per year of the six leading greenhouse gases, an estimated 13,000 facilities that account for 85-90 percent of total U.S. emissions. A few clicks on CARMA revealed that there are 9,473 power plants in the United States, but only 1,743 of these have emissions of more than 25,000 tons. The good news? These 1,743 plants account for more than 99 percent of U.S. power plant emissions.

On March 2, thousands of people are expected to engage in mass civil disobedience at the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant in Washington, DC. The protest, which is expected to include NASA climate scientist Jim Hanson, author Wendell Barry, and environmentalist Bill McKibben is timed to coincide with the final day of PowerShift09, a four-day “National Youth Summit” that aims to bring 10,000 students to Washington to lobby for action on climate change.

The Capitol Power Plant makes a convenient symbolic target. According to the Wikipedia account:

• In 2000, the office of the Architect of the Capitol considered eliminating the use of coal at the plant, but was dissuaded by two coal-state senators: Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
• In 2006, citizens from Capitol Hill, emboldened by the threat of global warming, met with the Architect of the Capitol to discuss ways to make the power plant more environmentally friendly, for example, by switching fuels. They were told that since the plant is owned by Congress, little would change without a Congressional mandate.
• In 2007, Nancy Pelosi seemed to give such a mandate, announcing a new effort to “green” the entire Capitol complex. But a plan to reduce the Capitol Power Plant’s emissions has not emerged, and Pelosi has instead pursued a controversial policy of purchasing carbon offsets from the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Oddly, the Capitol Hill Power Plant doesn’t actually generate any electrical power, a function that it ceased to perform in 1952. Since then it has provided the Capitol complex only steam and cooled water. Based on the amount of coal burned at the plant, it produces around 60,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year: about as much CO2 you would generate if you drove a Hummer from Washington DC to Los Angeles and back 20,000 times. That makes the Capitol Power Plant the largest single point source for greenhouse gases in within the District of Columbia. But it is still tiny compared to other coal-burning plants in the national capital region.

For example, according to CGD’s Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) database, the Potomac River Power Plant, located just across the river from the Capitol, produces almost thirty times the emissions of the Capitol Power Plant. (Owned by Mirant Corp., the Potomac plant has long been a target of environmental activists because of serious local negative health impacts.) The Robert W. Scherer Power Plant in Juliette, Georgia — the largest single-point source of carbon dioxide in the United States — produces more than 450 times the CO2 emissions of the Capitol Power Plant.

Of course, the leaders of the Capitol Hill protest understand the relatively small size of the Capitol Power Plant’s emissions. Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, wrote that the Capitol Power Plant wasn’t chosen because it produced a large amount of emissions, but rather “because it’s a way to get the conversation started.” That conversation is likely to continue. David Wheeler’s Another Inconvenient Truth points out that catastrophic climate change can only be averted if the rich world and the developing world both move to rapidly cut emissions. But the developing world, with a huge poverty burden and per capita emissions that are just a fraction of those in the United States and other rich countries, will not act unless the rich world goes first — and that means action to cut emissions in the United States, where vested interests are working hard to perpetuate business as usual.

The Capitol Power Plant protest, while not the first such action, is likely to be the highest profile civil disobedience on climate yet. Other creative, peaceful acts of civil disobedience will almost certainly follow. As Wheeler wrote last December, “the confrontation between complacent institutions and alarmed citizens is escalating, and threatens to become a collision.” When the young people who are now getting ready to head to Washington to take part in PowerShift09 return to their hometowns and campuses next week, CARMA (searchable by zip code) and other public information sources will be ready to help them identify nearby power plants and the firms that own them.

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

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.