Challenges of
Low-Carbon
Organizations
H. Scott Matthews
Carnegie Mellon University
28 Jan 2010
Green Engineering
Workshop
Sustainable Engineering
Many challenges
Developing new technologies
Assessing and requiring
technologies
Informing decision makers
All critical, I focus on the latter two
Metrics: Current Focus on
Carbon
Sustainability is far more than this
Water, quality of life, equity, etc.
We will need to tackle all of them, but
need to start somewhere.
Carbon focus a necessary evil?
Relevant Domains
CITY
COUNTRY
CAMPU
SES
CONSUMER
BUSINESS
Motivations and
Questions to Answer
Motivations
Carbon Neutrality Commitments:
1000+ cities, 1000+ campuses, 1000+
companies
Carbon Labeling, other retail efforts
Carbon footprinting and accounting
How can we achieve these?
Available Tools
Lots of “Calculators”
Hundreds in active use; mostly
consumers
Climate Crisis
Nature
Conservancy
carbonfund
EPA
WWF
PBS
5t
66t
8t
22t
9t
15t
Calculator “Aggregator”
Estimated CO2
Emissions
Carnegie Mellon University Campus
(2007)
THOUSAND TONS PER
YEAR
200
100
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Alternative Footprint
View
Carnegie Mellon Campus Emissions
Corporate Carbon Tools
As by WRI/WBCSD and others
(standards)
Focus on Scope 1 and 2 emissions
General Results
Average Product - Scope 1 + 2 only
26% of total carbon emissions
(refineries ~35%)
Two-thirds of products have less than
25% of their emissions in Scopes 1 + 2
i.e., emissions of a majority of
products are indirect
SOURCE: MATTHEWS, HENDRICKSON, WEBER, “THE IMPORTANCE OF CARBON
FOOTPRINT BOUNDARIES”, ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, VOL 42
NO 16, 2008.
Electricity Scope 1+2 an outlier at 90%
Sector Scope Averages
Scope 3 Dominates, “Everything else”
Other Emerging Tools
Our Innovation:
Product Carbon Calorimeter
“TAKING THE GUESSWORK OUT OF PRODUCT CARBON
FOOTPRINTING”
Total GHGs
embodied in product
Detail by GHG
Detail by Scope 1-3,
Detail by Industry ,
Country of origin
Use phase coming
soon
The “Surprise”
This piece of equipment does not exist
And can not exist
Problem is policymakers (and others, including
consultants and some in industry) presume that it
already does
Thus we need to question “calculators” and also
their use
Do We Understand The
Problem?
Number of Purchase
Decisions / yr
~100s
~1
~1
~1000
Source: Weber and Matthews, Ecological Economics (66), 2008.
ut primary “actors” for carbon in consumer product (food, misc) categorie
Carbon
Labels
What was the question?
Can we reliably do them?
Can we verify them?
Should Consumers Use
Them?
Tools Summary
Calculators built to inspire the problem
Dirty secrets
None are “correct”, all are
estimators
No ground truth
Seem to be missing the big picture
We need new tools to make decisions
Framework to Support
City-Scale Decisions
City Climate Action Plans
(CAPs)
Recall: 1000+ cities have signed
Very few have plans (similar to
campuses)
Because they lack expertise to do
more
Two pieces:
Inventory “a number”
Action Plan “a list of activities”
AVERAGE = 15
McKinsey GHG Cost Mitigation Curve
$10/ton
Distributed PV Power
Limitations for state & city
planning
0.5
1.0
1.3
1.3 1.5
2.0
Regional variability
Capital costs
Uncertainty
Transparency
Jurisdiction
Split incentives
$50/ton
CO2 Reductions (billion tons per
year)
$10/ton
2.5
3.0
Power generation
$50/ton
Cellulosic biofuels
for vehicles
Buildings
Industrial & waste
Forestry & agriculture
Transportation
$100/ton
LEDs in commercial buildings
Ref: McKinsey as presented in Miller
2009
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Existing Programs Nonuniform
Totals
15
300
1,100
Ref: DSIRE 2009
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21 tons eCO2/capita/yr
20 tons eCO2/capita/yr
9 tons eCO2/capita/yr
Case Study: Pittsburgh
Scenario: Replace with Retirement
Objective & Constraint: Max GHG reductions given annual
budget constraint
Complete
All
Projects
Significant Uncertainty
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13
20 tons eCO2/capita/yr
16 tons eCO2/capita/yr
6 tons eCO2/capita/yr
Case Study: Austin
Scenario: Replace with Retirement
Objective & Constraint: Max GHG reductions given annual
budget constraint
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14
Conclusions
What are the costs & benefits of local building efficiency
programs?
 Typical capital costs <$3/capita/ton/yr up to a 20% GHG
reduction
uncertainty
program design?
How
20-yrdoes
surplus
around impact
$1,000/ton/capita
 Capital costs for GHG reductions $0 to $20/capita/ton/yr
 Savings of $300 - $400 NPV/ton expected for 10-50%
reduction
 Uncertainty makes capital planning challenging
 BUT these were all technological fixes! Conservation much
easier.
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Lessons on the Challenge
“It” is large and uncertain
The expertise is lacking, but centralized
Completely new tools are needed
Thank You
Questions?
hsm@cmu.edu