The most important energy development of the past decade has been the wide deployment of hydraulic fracturing technologies that enable the production of previously uneconomic shale gas resources in ...North America. If these advanced gas production technologies were to be deployed globally, the energy market could see a large influx of economically competitive unconventional gas resources. The climate implications of such abundant natural gas have been hotly debated. Some researchers have observed that abundant natural gas substituting for coal could reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Others have reported that the non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions associated with shale gas production make its lifecycle emissions higher than those of coal. Assessment of the full impact of abundant gas on climate change requires an integrated approach to the global energy-economy-climate systems, but the literature has been limited in either its geographic scope or its coverage of greenhouse gases. Here we show that market-driven increases in global supplies of unconventional natural gas do not discernibly reduce the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions or climate forcing. Our results, based on simulations from five state-of-the-art integrated assessment models of energy-economy-climate systems independently forced by an abundant gas scenario, project large additional natural gas consumption of up to +170 per cent by 2050. The impact on CO2 emissions, however, is found to be much smaller (from -2 per cent to +11 per cent), and a majority of the models reported a small increase in climate forcing (from -0.3 per cent to +7 per cent) associated with the increased use of abundant gas. Our results show that although market penetration of globally abundant gas may substantially change the future energy system, it is not necessarily an effective substitute for climate change mitigation policy.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Establishing a credible and effective transparency regime to support the Paris Agreement - broader than its formal 'transparency framework' - will be both crucial and challenging. The Agreement ...provides for review of achievements under national pledges (Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs), but much of this information will become available only well after key steps in the launch of this latest attempt to control human influence on the climate. Still, in these early years, information and understanding of individual and collective performance, and of relative national burdens under the NDCs, will play an important role in the success or failure of the Agreement. However, because of the phasing of various steps in the 5-year cycles under the Agreement and the unavoidable delays of two or more years to produce and review government reports, the Climate Convention and other intergovernmental institutions are ill-suited to carry out timely analyses of progress. Consequently, in advance of formal procedures, academic and other non-governmental groups are going to provide analyses based on available data and their own methodologies. The article explores this transparency challenge - using the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model to construct sample analyses - and considers ways that efforts outside official channels can contribute to the success of the Agreement.
Key policy insights:
Because key national decisions are faced before full implementation of the transparency framework, being negotiated by the Ad-Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA), urgent attention is needed to activities supporting the regime's system of pledge and review.
Outcomes of these APA negotiations, explored here, including features of reported NDCs and guidelines for tracking progress, will influence the effectiveness of the Agreement in encouraging greater mitigation effort.
Whatever the outcome of the APA negotiations, studies by academic and other non-governmental analysis groups will in the near term have a particularly great influence on the transparency objectives of the Agreement.
Challenges to the provision by these groups of clear, coherent, credible analyses are explored, leading to recommendations for improved documentation of methods and standards of practice in analysis.
Three-Dimensional X-Ray Microtomography Flannery, Brian P.; Deckman, Harry W.; Roberge, Wayne G. ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
1987-Sep-18, Letnik:
237, Številka:
4821
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The new technique of x-ray microtomography nondestructively generates three-dimensional maps of the x-ray attenuation coefficient inside small samples with approximately 1 percent accuracy and with ...resolution approaching 1 micrometer. Spatially resolved elemental maps can be produced with synchrotron x-ray sources by scanning samples at energies just above and below characteristic atomic absorption edges. The system consists of a high-resolution imaging x-ray detector and high-speed algorithms for tomographic image reconstruction. The design and operation of the microtomography device are described, and tomographic images that illustrate its performance with both synchrotron and laboratory x-ray sources are presented.
Standard latitudinally resolved energy balance models describe conservation of energy on a sphere subject to solar heating, cooling by IR radiation, and diffusive redistribution of energy according ...to a Fourier-type heat flow with flux proportional to the gradient of temperature. The model determines the distribution of temperature with latitude T(x). The author considers a similar model, the two-phase model, in which transport of both thermal energy of air and latent heat associated with water vapor are incorporated. The two-phase model is used to calculate climate change, i.e., Delta T(x), as a function of varying insolation and changing concentration of atmospheric CO sub(2) under the assumption that relative humidity does not change. The results are compared with calculations from standard energy balance models and general circulation models. The distribution of warming with latitude for doubled atmospheric CO sub(2) found with the two-phase model agrees far better with the pattern of warming found in GCM studies than do results found with the standard model. In particular, the two-phase model, like the GCM, shows greater warming at the poles than at the Equator. In the two-phase model, polar amplification can be explained in terms of a temperature-dependent effective diffusion coefficient that increases with warming. Amplification of warming toward the poles occurs in the two-phase model because the ability of the system to transport heat increases as the system warms.
Comment Flannery, Brian P
Energy economics,
07/2011, Letnik:
33, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This comment will address CCS from the perspective of potential suppliers, operators, and clients in large-scale systems. CCS today lacks both an economically viable policy framework and a business ...model. Although little has changed regarding the available technology, and the potential for CCS to mitigate emissions since publication of the comprehensive IPCC (2005) review, much has changed concerning estimates of costs, institutional barriers, and enablers. As well, the major expansion in proven reserves of natural gas gives increased impetus to understand the implications of CCS applied to power from natural gas as a significant option to mitigate emissions. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Comment Flannery, Brian P
Energy economics,
07/2011, Letnik:
33, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This comment will address CCS from the perspective of potential suppliers, operators, and clients in large-scale systems. CCS today lacks both an economically viable policy framework and a business ...model. Although little has changed regarding the available technology, and the potential for CCS to mitigate emissions since publication of the comprehensive IPCC (2005) review, much has changed concerning estimates of costs, institutional barriers, and enablers. As well, the major expansion in proven reserves of natural gas gives increased impetus to understand the implications of CCS applied to power from natural gas as a significant option to mitigate emissions. Copyright Elsevier B.V.
Comment Flannery, Brian P.
Energy economics,
2011, Letnik:
33, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This comment will address CCS from the perspective of potential suppliers, operators, and clients in large-scale systems. CCS today lacks both an economically viable policy framework and a business ...model. Although little has changed regarding the available technology, and the potential for CCS to mitigate emissions since publication of the comprehensive IPCC (2005) review, much has changed concerning estimates of costs, institutional barriers, and enablers. As well, the major expansion in proven reserves of natural gas gives increased impetus to understand the implications of CCS applied to power from natural gas as a significant option to mitigate emissions.
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