Cost of reducing emssions

Cardew

We all have seen the eye watering amounts the various political parties have committed in their manifestos to combat emissions. Sums of £100billion a year for the next 10 years are being proposed. Not far short of the entire expenditure on the NHS.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/biggest-contributors-to-global-warming-in-the-world.html

The above link lists, by country, the biggest contributors to Global Warming.

Global Total (%)
1 China 27.51%
2 United States 14.75
3 India 6.43
4 Russia 4.86
5 Japan 2.99
6 Brazil 2.25
7 Germany 1.98
8 Indonesia 1.64
9 Canada 1.63
10 Mexico 1.62

The last figure I read for GB was approx. 1%

Few doubt the importance of combatting Global Warming, albeit some question how much is due to us humans. The case for the latter is weakened by Trump being a proponent!!

So it would appear that if GB succeeds in reducing all our emissions to Zero by 2050 at current rates we will have made a reduction of 1% in the world figure. However if current forecasts are correct, by 2040 China alone will have increased the world total by 23%(i.e. they will have doubled their emissions.

Do we have any faith that the Big 3 and third world countries will stop increasing emissions, let alone aim for a Zero output.

I can't help feeling there is a parallel between the 'Green' protestors on the streets arguing that GB is not doing enough, and the 'Ban the Bomb' protestors of YesterYear arguing that Britain should unilaterally get rid of Nuclear weapons to set an example to the rest of the world and they would surely follow.

So my question is can GB alone justify spending such vast sums for an almost negligible effect? I for one have my doubts.

ABrass

Everyone needs to spend those 'vast' amounts. Quotes because we're talking spending at a national scale, at a national scale all expenses are vast.

We have around 1% of the global emissions, and a similar number for the number of people. We're slap bang in the middle of average.

We do need to spend that money because if we, a wealthy and developed nation, can't be arsed to do it then why should anyone else?

GreatApe

ABrass wrote: »

We do need to spend that money because if we, a wealthy and developed nation, can't be arsed to do it then why should anyone else?

The easy effective things should be done more than that should be put off to another time

The problem is.... there is no problem
Fossil fuels make society more robust more healthy
The environment is something we are part of we will eat meat we will use land and resources and we need not feel guilt about it we are of this world

In due course we will have the technology where these mild problems will be easily solved.
At some stage we will get exponential manufacturing
A droid that can build a droid in a month which can build a droid each in a month..... In just three years time you have a droid army that is 70 billion units. You can do literally whatever you want in almost no time at that stage.

EVandPV

I've been pondering this for a while after personally spending a fair bit on stuff that will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
Can't help but wonder why I'm even bothering when the likes of China throw up coal power stations every other day.
But like ABrass said, if we don't make a start, you can pretty much guarantee the rest won't either.

GreatApe

Cardew wrote: »

We all have seen the eye watering amounts the various political parties have committed in their manifestos to combat emissions. Sums of £100billion a year for the next 10 years are being proposed. Not far short of the entire expenditure on the NHS.

This would be foolish and I doubt any government could or would spend £100 billion a year on lowering fossil fuel useage. If we have that spare capacity and money +£50 billion a year on the NHS and social services would do so much more good for the people

The current method is working okay there isn't a need to do much more
Just deploy 3GW of offshore wind per year and add one Interconnector per year
Have good building and efficiency standards
And await judgement day when the AI arrives :beer: whereby everything becomes free or its the end for our time in this existence

GreatApe

EVandPV wrote: »

I've been pondering this for a while after personally spending a fair bit on stuff that will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
Can't help but wonder why I'm even bothering when the likes of China throw up coal power stations every other day.
But like ABrass said, if we don't make a start, you can pretty much guarantee the rest won't either.

You are bothering because it's your hobby and a hobby need not be economically advantageous or even have a purpose. Not everyone needs to have the same hobby

The problem will be solved this century technology will advance to the point where wind and coal cost the same (probably zero for both) in which case you will use wind.

The storage problem will be solved with a world grid. This would be ridiculous expensive today but technology will reduce the cost towards zero

Fossil fuels really are the most fluffy of all the issues we will face this century
There is a not trivial chance that the species won't even make it past this century
Why worry about how many atoms of carbon are floating in the air when this century will see the birth of a super intelligence we will be as relevant to the future as chimpanzees are relevant to modern human society in 2019

1961Nick

The question should be "What is the cost of not reducing our carbon emissions?" - Unfortunately, as far as the UK is concerned, the answer to that is virtually no overall difference ... at most it's 1% but we are already reducing that without spending hundreds of billions.

If the major carbon emitters carry on as they are, and the sea level continues to rise, we may be better off spending billions on flood defences & drainage rather than trying to prevent the inevitable. We could start off by ensuring that every new building, road, railway, utility etc can withstand a 1.5M rise in sea level.

EricMears

1961Nick wrote: »

We could start off by ensuring that every new building, road, railway, utility etc can withstand a 1.5M rise in sea level.

A better starting point would be to stop building on historic flood plains ! I'm sure I can't be the only persom who wondered why some houses in FISHPONDS near Doncaster got flooded when the nearby church, pub, shops and older houses weren't.

Martyn1981

EVandPV wrote: »

I've been pondering this for a while after personally spending a fair bit on stuff that will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
Can't help but wonder why I'm even bothering when the likes of China throw up coal power stations every other day.
But like ABrass said, if we don't make a start, you can pretty much guarantee the rest won't either.

There is a lot of good news though, as whilst China is building a lot of new coal generation capacity, their coal consumption has mostly flat lined, as the coal fleet is operating at every lower capacity factors.

Recent news (Nov 2019):

Global use of coal-fired electricity set for biggest fall this year

The world’s use of coal-fired electricity is on track for its biggest annual fall on record this year after more than four decades of near-uninterrupted growth that has stoked the global climate crisis.

Data shows that coal-fired electricity is expected to fall by 3% in 2019, or more than the combined coal generation in Germany, Spain and the UK last year and could help stall the world’s rising carbon emissions this year.

The steepest global slump on record is likely to emerge in 2019 as India’s reliance on coal power falls for the first time in at least three decades this year, and China’s coal power demand plateaus.

The researchers found that China’s coal-fired power generation was flatlining, despite an increase in the number of coal plants being built, because they were running at record low rates. China builds the equivalent of one large new coal plant every two weeks, according to the report, but its coal plants run for only 48.6% of the time, compared with a global utilisation rate of 54% on average.

The EU reported a record slump in coal-fired electricity use in the first half of the year of almost a fifth compared with the same months last year. This trend is expected to accelerate over the second half of the year to average a 23% fall over 2019 as a whole. The EU is using less coal power in favour of gas-fired electricity – which can have roughly half the carbon footprint of coal – and renewable energy.

As you and ABrass point out, we all have to do our share, and historically the UK is still near the top with the US and Germany (per capita) as we are responsible for ~5% of all the CO2 emissions. Historically China is responsible for about 3x the UK (but 20x the population) and about half the US, but is off course the single largest emitter (by country) on an annual basis now.


Regarding spending, obviously at the moment the problem is reducing CO2 emissions as fast as possible to reduce the scale of the impact, on all.

ABrass posted a while back that spending on mitigation was equal to 7x as much spending on adaptation - obviously it's better to reduce the problem, than to try to cope with a far bigger problem later on. So what that means, effectively, is that every pound that is spent on adaptation instead of mitigation in the World, will make mitigation £1 worse off, and adaptation £6 worse off!


Edit - If anyone is interested in looking at CO2 data be it annual, cumulative etc, then this site is excellent:

CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

And if you scroll about 1/4 way down to:

How has each country’s share of global cumulative CO2 emissions changed over time?

and select 'chart', you can see the cumulative percentages and how we were 'world leaders' until 1910 when the larger population US finally overtook us, as did China in 1999.

Cardew

Martyn1981 wrote: »

As you and ABrass point out, we all have to do our share, and historically the UK is still near the top with the US and Germany (per capita) as we are responsible for ~5% of all the CO2 emissions. Historically China is responsible for about 3x the UK (but 20x the population) and about half the US, but is off course the single largest emitter (by country) on an annual basis now.

Interesting though it may be, what is the relevance in comparing the 5% figure UK have historically contributed since, presumably, the Industrial Revolution, with the 1% UK currently contributes?

GreatApe

EricMears wrote: »

A better starting point would be to stop building on historic flood plains ! I'm sure I can't be the only persom who wondered why some houses in FISHPONDS near Doncaster got flooded when the nearby church, pub, shops and older houses weren't.

Cardew wrote: »

Interesting though it may be, what is the relevance in comparing the 5% figure UK have historically contributed since, presumably, the Industrial Revolution, with the 1% UK currently contributes?

Plus by doing nothing our historical emmissions rate will fall to 1% as all the other countries now catch up so there is no historical gilt or debt

If anything the UK helped save billions of people by adopting fossil fuels sooner and taking advantage of them and showing this positive fossil fuel way to do things to Others