This tweet sums up the biggest problem with intermittent power sources:
Yesterday, a fairly dramatic low in terms of solar & wind output. Fortunately, there were also great days this year.
Although sun and wind often complement each other, the total forms a rather ‘skewed’ distribution. We will have to learn to deal with that soon.
#graphoftheday
This is the graph he is talking about:
And now for something completely different. Via Watts Up With That I learned about a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study titled “Halfway to zero: progress towards a carbon-free power sector“. The conclusion of the study is that the US power sector is already halfway to zero carbon emissions. This is their overview graphic with all the gains that were made since 2005:
They didn’t look at actual emission decreases from 2005, but compared current emissions to emission projections made in 2005.
They exhausted this technique in the rest of the study. Another example is the statement that the total electricity bill in 2020 is 18% less than projected. Mind you, this again is not an actual decrease. Consumers don’t see their electricity bills drop by 18% since 2005, it was projected in 2005 that the electricity bill would be higher in 2020 than what it actually was in 2020.
That is a pretty neat technique, they basically show that things could be worse and can then declare this as a gain.
I am in a cheeky mood right now, so let me try to apply this technique in my own life and see how much gain I can squeeze out of it…
After writing previous post, the RenewEconomy article kept going through my mind. The author of the article suggested that the response of the Hornsdale Power Reserve to a tripping coal fired power unit was extraordinary, when in reality it was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I wondered why on earth the author was so lyrical about what was in fact a poor performance…
Then it suddenly struck me. It might well be a misinterpretation of how the event was represented.
Let me explain.
There were two graphs presented in the article. The first one is the frequency versus the response of the Hornsdale Power Unit and it stood central in previous post. There is however a second graph in the article and it is this graph that could easily lend itself to misinterpretation. It shows the sharp decline of the tripped coal unit combined with the response of the Hornsdale battery:
In previous post, I discussed a graph that suggested that the CO2 and CH4 levels in the atmosphere are unprecedented in the last 800,000 years and proposed that it is misleading to compare high resolution data with low resolution data. After I published that post, I wondered whether I could illustrate this with an example. It should be possible if I had some detailed dataset. Then I could make a detailed graph, see how that looks like, then sample this dataset in the same way as a proxy dataset and again make a graph. Comparing both graphs should make clear what the effect is.
It was not my intention to look deeper into the COP21 conference, but I couldn’t resist. The thing that got this started was an info graphic I saw in a news paper. It depicted the pledges of the largest emitters and amongst them the pledge of Russia. To me, that pledge stood out like a sore thumb. My initial reaction at that time was:
No way!
25-30% emission reduction, that is incredibly nice of Mr. Putin, but I thought there was something fishy with this message. Russia is not exactly the country that bought into the global warming scare. They have been very skeptical and probably will have more advantages than disadvantages from a warming climate. They also clearly said that they wouldn’t sacrifice their economy in order to cut emissions. So reading that they are actually willing to cut their emissions by 25 to 30% by 2030 sounds unbelievable to me.
As with so many things concerning climate policies reporting, the devil is in the detail. The detail here is “compared to what”. That “what” being the emissions in 1990:
Aha! Now it makes a lot more sense. I know where that comes from, I have seen such construction before. When I looked at the emission reductions of the developing countries, emission data showed that Russia and Ukraine were responsible for 95% of the (relatively small) decrease in emissions of the developing countries. So the increasing share of alternative power sources couldn’t be the cause of that decrease, because that share was/is almost non-existing in both countries.
The reason why the Russia’s emissions of Russia dropped from 1989 was the collapse of the Soviet Union and many energy inefficient factories and heavy industry that closed their doors. Taking the emissions of 1990 as a base would have rather interesting results.
I had still some recent data of emissions on my hard drive, so I went for a very quick back-on-the-envelop look. This is how the emissions trend is for Russia, just look at the quickly dropping numbers starting from 1989 and its slow recovery at the end of last century:
Source of the data: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/
A rough look learns us that a 25% reduction from 1990 would mean that they are already almost at their target, so that reduction by 2030 turns out to be quite meaningless. By the way, 25-30% of 1990 levels was exactly what they also agreed to do by 2020.
It didn’t stop there. There still was that intriguing statement that “Russia’s massive forests absorb around 500m tonnes of CO2 each year”. Was this included in the pledge? When looking for more information I found the Russian INDC submission (Intended Nationally Determined Contribution). This explains that they want the contribution of the Russian forests taken fully into account in their pledge. This indeed seemed to be estimated to 500 Mt CO2 per year (since 2000). So let me add to the graph above what the Russians think their emissions actually are and how that relates to their target:
Source of the data: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/
Also look at the direction of the current emissions:
Source of the data: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/
That trend is upwards and only interrupted by the 2008 financial crisis. They were serious when saying they don’t want to sacrifice their economy.
Just continuing looking at it on a rough scale, they dropped about 500 Mt in the 14 years from 1990 until 2013, being already more or less on their target right now. But because of their creative accounting, they still have a spare 500 Mt (from absorption of CO2 by their forests), which means that they can continue as they do now without even missing their target.
25-30% emission reduction sounds really nice, but the contrary seems to be true. In stead of willing to decrease their emissions by 25%, they actually have even room for a INcrease of 25% to get their “target” by 2030. Even if they continue to increase their emissions at the same rate as it is increasing since 1999, they would probably still reach their target. Clever guys, these Russians.
I was surprised that this was only skin-deep. Just scratching at the surface will show it. If the pledge of Russia looks so very promising from the outside, but worthless when you look deeper, what about the submissions of the other countries? Just look at what India pledged: a decrease of 33-35% reduction in emission, ahem, “intensity”…
This act of creative accounting by the Russians could well be the tip of the iceberg.
Update
Found in the meanwhile some more of those creative accounting techniques (Dutch). Beside the Russian plan, there are also:
I didn’t check these numbers, just put them here as I found it.
Those countries seem to do their very best to impress/fool each other and the public with their numbers.
When playing with the PBL infographics on trends in global CO2 emissions I came around some intriguing things. As seen in previous posts, PBL explained the increase in share of renewable energy by first showing the 1990 values:
Share of wind and solar increasing 1990. Source: http://infographics.pbl.nl/website/globalco2/
and compare this with the 2012 values:
Share of wind and solar increasing 2012. Source: http://infographics.pbl.nl/website/globalco2/
So far, so good. I found the color scheme particularly interesting. The renewable energy circle is in a deep green color and the other sources are in a pale gray. At first they seems the same gray, but looking closer that doesn’t seem to be the case. The circles of the fossil fuel group are paler than the low-carbon energy group.
Trust, yet verify 