Energy Supplies
and Climate
David Rutledge, Caltech
Milestones in the Climate-Change Discussion
•
•
•
•
•
1997 Kyoto Agreement to reduce CO2 emissions by 2012 — most
significant lack of support is from the United States (signed, but
not submitted to the Senate for ratification), Canada (ratified, but
has announced plans to withdraw), and Taiwan (did not sign)
1998 UN IPCC (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change)
Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) — 40 scenarios for
making projections that are business-as-usual with respect to
climate change
2007 UN IPCC (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change)
publishes its 4th Assessment Report
2009 G8 at L’Aquila, Italy, sets a goal of reducing fossil-fuel CO2
emissions 80% by 2050
2009 UN Copenhagen Accord sets a goal of limiting the
temperature rise to 2°C above pre-industrial levels
2
A Conceptual Climate-Change Model
Fossil
Fuel
Supply

Atmospheric
CO2
The range for
total production
in the long run in
the 40 IPCC SRES
scenarios is 10:1
1°C x log2(CO2)
Direct
Lifetime of “300
years, plus 25%
that lasts forever”
— David Archer
3x Feedback
Amplification
Thermal
Delay
Temperature Sensitivity in the IPCC
4th Assessment Report
90% chance that the temperature
sensitivity is higher than
1.5°C/doubling of CO2
— essentially unchanged since the
Charney report in 1979
3
UN Copenhagen Accord, 2009
• Agreement to limit temperature rise to 2°C above pre-industrial levels
5
The Kyoto Agreement
• World fossil-fuel carbon-dioxide emissions from the BP Statistical Review
— the 2012 point is an extrapolation from 2010 and 2011
• For an 80% reduction by 2050
– Imagine the collapse of the Soviet Union, repeated four times, for the entire
world, voluntarily
– On a personal basis, visualize going back to life in 1881
6
World Annual Per-Person Energy Production
•
•
•
•
•
Gtoe = billions of metric tons of oil equivalent, 1 toe = 42GJ
Wood and water from Arnulf Grubler, 2003, Technology and Global Change
Coal, oil, gas, and alternatives from the BP Statistical Review and FAO (UN)
Population from the UN Population Division
Pattern is a rise followed by a plateau — no plateau yet for natural gas
7
GDP vs Oil Consumption — 1980-2011
• Oil from the BP Statistical Review and GDP from the World Bank
(Russian GDP from 1989 on)
• Ratio $15.81/liter is improving at about 2% per year — not a large
variation between countries
8
GDP vs Electricity Generation — 1985-2011
• Electricity from the BP Statistical Review and GDP from the World Bank
(Russian GDP from 1989 on)
• Ratio $3.67/kWh is relatively stable with time and across countries
• China, Russia, Australia, US, Canada are below the line — coal producers
9
Fossil-Fuel Energy Independence
• Fossil-fuel independence is the ratio of production to
consumption for oil, gas, and coal
• Source is the BP Statistical Review
• North America and China are current coal producers
• EU and Japan are former coal producers
10
2011 Fossil-Fuel Energy Independence
China
North America
EU + Norway
Japan
•
•
•
•
Independence 10-year change
92%
−9%
89%
4%
36%
−15%
0.2%
−0.3%
Source is the BP Statistical Review
China is becoming an important energy importer
North America is moving toward energy independence
EU oil, gas, and coal production are all dropping
11
“New” Alternatives Electricity Shares
•
•
•
•
•
“New alternatives — biogas, geothermal, solar, waste, wind, wood
Source is the BP Statistical Review
The EU was behind the US and Japan in 1990
The EU has strongly encouraged the growth of alternatives
Only for electricity, not transportation fuel!
12
2011 “New” Alternatives Electricity Shares
Alternatives
share
10-year
change
Price
¢/kWh
Price index
change
EU
11.0%
8.7%
35
27%
US
4.6%
2.8%
12
10%
Japan
3.0%
1.1%
27
−5%
China
1.7%
1.4%
na
na
• “New alternatives — biogas, geothermal, solar, waste, wind, wood
• Source for shares is the BP Statistical Review
• Source for price index is the IEA, 2000-201, inflation-adjusted (EU price is
Germany, EU price index is Europe OECD)
• Subsidies for alternatives make it difficult to say what the price really is
• The EU example shows that growth of about 1% per year is possible
13
Alternatives Share in World Energy Production
• Re-plotted from the earlier slide
• From the BP Statistical Review and the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
• Since 1985, we have been in a range between 14% and 16%
14
Since the Kyoto agreement was signed in
1997, world fossil-fuel CO2 emissions have
risen 40%, and the alternatives share has
dropped from 15.5% to 15.0%
I will be considering projections that are
business-as-usual with respect to climate
policy
Oil Production in the IPCC Scenarios
• Gb = billions of barrels, historical production from the BP Statistical Review
• Still growing in 13 scenarios in 2100
16
Outline: The Goal is to Reduce these
Uncertainties by Replacing Subjective
Estimates and Scenarios with Statistics
• Oil, gas, and coal
–
–
–
–
US crude oil — Hubbert’s peak
British coal — The Coal Question
World coal
World oil and gas
• Climate
–
–
–
–
CO2 concentrations
Temperature
Sea level
Crop yield
17
The journal listed this paper as a “top review” paper for 2011
18
Characterizing Uncertainty
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Residuals are the differences between data and models
The “best” model is used for projections
Uncertainty refers to the inconsistency in a group of projections
A range giving the upper and lower values is one measure of uncertainty
— a one-sided example would be designing for the 100-year flood
When residuals can be decorrelated, we can create bootstrap
replications, which are effectively alternative histories with the same
statistical properties as the actual history
Replications allow us to calculate confidence intervals — statements of
the form “The 90% confidence interval is 1.6°C to 2.4°C” means that
there is a 90% chance that the interval includes the actual temperature
Limitations in confidence intervals (uncertainty index might be a better
term) — they depend on the form of the models, some uncertainties are
left out, and the models can break down
Validation (testing the model) on partial historical data is critical —
difficult to validate models with more than two or three variables
19
King Hubbert
• Geophysicist at
the Shell lab in
Houston, Texas
• In 1956, he
wrote a paper
suggesting a
range of peak
years for US
crude-oil
production from
1965 to 1970
20
US Crude-Oil Production
• Gb = billions of barrels
• Data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the North Dakota
Department of Mineral Resources and the Texas Railroad Commission
• Does not include natural gas liquids — ethane, propane, and butane
• Bakken and Eagle Ford Shales were 8% of production in 2011
21
US Fossil-Fuels Production
• Oil, gas, and coal recent from the BP Statistical Review, early oil and gas
production from Brian Mitchell International Historical Statistics, early
coal production from the EIA — BP includes natural-gas liquids (ethane,
propane, and butane) with oil
• Transition from coal to gas for electricity — coal miners exporting now
22
Cumulative Production for US Crude Oil
• Top of the scale for the normal gives a projection for the
long-term production — total production, past and future
23
Probit Transform for US Crude Oil
• Cumulative production is linearized by the probit transform
(inverse of the standard cumulative normal)
• The plot is for probit(q/Q), where q is cumulative production, and
Q is the proposed long-term production
• Maximize r2 (correlation coefficient squared) — gives 0.99991
• A one-parameter fit, 1 second in Excel
24
Residuals for US Crude Oil
• Residuals are expressed in the equivalent months of production —
positive residuals show we are ahead of schedule, negative
residuals show we are behind schedule
• Maximum residual from 1902 on is 10 months — 7 months in 2011
25
Historical Fits for Long-Term Production
•
•
•
•
Range from 206Gb to 235Gb from 1946 on (13%)
Large circles are government estimates, small circles are non-government
Government median is 433Gb, non-government median is 230Gb
USGS = US Geological Survey, MMS = Mineral Management Service 26
Kenneth Deffeyes on the USGS Assessments
“When USGS workers tried to estimate resources,
they acted, well, like bureaucrats. Whenever a
judgment call was made about choosing a statistical
method, the USGS almost invariably tended to pick
the one that gave the higher estimate.”
Kenneth Deffeyes
Professor of Geology, emeritus,
Princeton University
Deffeyes’ Law of Bureaucratic Resource Estimates
27
British Coal
Photo by
28
John Cornwell
Stanley Jevons, 1865
The Coal Question
29
UK Coal Production
• Mt = millions of metric tons
• At the peak, Britain exported 1/3 of its production — in recent
years the UK has imported more than half of what it burned
30
Historical Projections and
Cumulative Production
• Fit uses a different s-curve, the logistic function, that
gives a better fit than the cumulative normal
• Linearized through the logit transform r2 = 0.9995
31
Historical Projections Compared with Reserves
•
•
•
•
Reserve numbers are available before long-term fits
Produced 18% of the 1871 Royal Commission reserves + cumulative
Criteria chosen were too optimistic ― 1-ft seams, 4,000-ft depth
Collapse in reserves in 1968 — the five collieries left with producing
longwall faces (down from 803 faces in 1972) were all producing by 1968
32
Summary for Mature Coal Regions
Region
United
Kingdom
Pennsylvania
anthracite
France and
Belgium
Japan and
South Korea
2011
production
Mt
Cumulative
production
Gt
Long-term
production
projection
Gt
18
27.4
28.8
1.6
5.04
5.05
0.1
7.2
7.6
3.4
3.6
3.7
Long-term
Long-term
production Early reserves
production
Reserves
projection + cumulative
projection as % of
year
range
Gt
early reserves +
Gt
cumulative
26.8 - 30.0
(11% span)
3.1 - 5.1
(40% span)
4.3 - 8.5
(55% span)
2.2 - 3.8
(44% span)
153
1871
19%
12
1921
42%
33
1936
23%
17
1936
21%
• Estimate of the long-term production based on the early reserves were four
times too high, on average
• Curve fits gave good estimates of the eventual long-term production (20%)
33
Western US Coal Production
• Early production cycle peaked in 1918 — centered on Colorado,
extremely limited by lack of railroad capacity to customers
• New start after the 1970 Clean-Air Act Extension, which encouraged
the use of low-sulfur coal, and the 1980 Staggers Rail Act, which
deregulated the railroads
34
Western Coal
• Long-term production fit is 43Gt (27% of reserves + cumulative)
• Largest residual is 2 months in 2011
35
Historical Projections Compared with Reserves for US Coal
• Marius Campbell of the USGS did the first reserves in 1913
• Paul Averitt was responsible for the reserves from 1948-1975. He
responded to criticism from mining engineers by tightening reserves
criteria — seams at least 28 inches thick, up to 1,000 feet deep,
within 3/4 mile from a measurement, 50% recovery
• Now 16 times lower than in 1913
36
Chinese Coal
• World’s largest producer — passed the US in 1985
• 46% of world’s production in 2010 — 3.6 times the US production
• Even if some US coal plants are shut down, US coal miners may be
able to shift to exports — also should be noted that Wyoming coal
miners make $10/t, while Australian coal miners make $90/t in the
East Asian market
37
Plans equivalent to US
capacity after closings
Last 4 years equivalent to
US capacity after closings
38
Cumulative Production with Curve Fits
• For the current fit, r2 is 0.9994
• Long-term production fit is 191Gt (117% of reserves + cumulative)
39
Historical Fits for Long-Term Production
Compared with Reserves
• Reserves submitted to World Energy Council in 1989 and 1992 differ by 6:1
40
World Coal Production
• Other regions not shown, but are available on line in an Excel
workbook and in the paper
• 14% range from 1994 on
• Current long-term fit is 755Gt, 65% of reserves + cumulative
• IPCC range for production through 2100 is 355 to 3500Gt
41
Where Does the IPCC Get Its Coal Numbers?
World Energy Proved recoverable Additional recoverable
Council survey
reserves, Gt
reserves, Gt
1992
1039
702
1995
1032
680
1998
984
3368
2001
984
409
2004
909
449
2007
847
180
• The scenario report SRES (2000) references the 1995 and 1998 surveys
• The IPCC chose to use additional recoverable reserves and they also
chose 1998 (3368Gt) instead of 1995 (680Gt) (Deffeyes’ Law)
• Additional recoverable reserves are now 19 times smaller than in 1998
• The 4th Assessment Report notes the reserves for the 2004 survey, and
“an estimated additional possible resource of 100,000EJ [5,000Gt] …”
— with no reference
42
World Oil and Gas Production
• 7.33 barrels of oil = 1 metric ton, toe = metric tons of oil equivalent
• Natural gas added as the energy equivalent
43
Probit Transform for World Oil and Gas
• Slowdown in the production pace causes a change in slope
44
Historical Long-term Fits for World Oil and Gas
• 660Gtoe compares with BP’s reserves + cumulative, 650Gtoe
• Residuals decorrelated by an AR2 process
• 90% confidence band from 1000 bootstrap replications
• Current confidence interval is 604 to 729Gtoe (19%)
45
Carbon-Dioxide Emissions
• Carbon coefficients for oil, gas, and coal from the BP Statistical Review
• Projection is less than any of the 40 IPCC scenarios (Deffeyes’ Law?)
• For next assessment report, representative concentration pathways
(RCPs) are planned — RCP8.5 is the business-as-usual one, with longterm emissions of 6TtC (6 times larger than curve fits)
• RCP8.5 does not appear to be working with an explicit set of resource
constraints, and no uncertainties have been given yet
46
Projected CO2 Levels — Schmitz Model
• Projection includes 1GtC per year for land-use change
• The 2067 peak at 459ppm is close to 2072, the projected 90%
exhaustion year for fossil fuels
• 64% of the way to the top from the 1850-1900 average — only the
remaining 36% is accessible to policy
• Maximum width of confidence band is equivalent to 0.13°C at the
IPCC recommended sensitivity of 3°C for a doubling of CO2
47
Temperature Projections
Fossil
Fuel
Supply

Atmospheric
CO2
1°C x log2(CO2)
Direct
3x Feedback
Amplification
Thermal
Delay
I will use a simple correlation model for the temperature projections.
“... essentially, all models are wrong. Some models are useful.”
— George Box, University of Wisconsin
“The climate debate is a zoo, no getting around it, ...”
— Judy Curry, Georgia Tech
48
How Good is the Correlation between CO2 and
Temperature? — Vostok, Antarctica
• A similar graph appeared in Al Gore’s Oscar-winning Inconvenient Truth
• The temperature reference is the modern temperature
• Generally the temperature changes happen before the CO2 changes —
this means that CO2 changes are not the trigger for the changes
49
How Good is the Correlation between CO2
and Temperature? — Then and Now
• The recent 1.9°C/doubling of CO2 levels may not be a bad number
– Thermal delay would increase the sensitivity
– The rise from short-term greenhouse gases like black-carbon would lower it
• The recent r2 of 0.78 for CO2 level compares with an r2 of 0.66 for time
50
HadCrut4 Temperature Data Set
• From the British Hadley Centre at
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/download.html
• 90% confidence band for temperatures is 0.1°C wide
51
Correlation Model for Temperature
• Model is T = T0 + T1 log2(CO2) , where T0 is an offset, T1 is a sensitivity
52
Confidence Band for the Sensitivity of
log2(CO2) to Sea-Surface Temperature
• Stable for more than 60 years — 1.7°C to 2.5°C range
• 90% confidence band from 1000 bootstrap replications — 1.7°C to 2.2°C
• Confidence band is completely consistent with IPCC’s range for
temperature sensitivity, but narrower
53
Temperature Projection
• The confidence band from 1000 bootstrap replications — includes
both short-term fluctuations and model uncertainty
• Projection is below the IPCC range, because of smaller fossil-fuel
production — confidence band is below the Copenhagen limit
54
The Pacific
Institute, 2009,
Heberger,
Cooley, Herrera,
Gleick, and
Moore
• Simulation for
the IPCC A1FI
scenario at
Oxnard, north of
Los Angeles —
1.4m by 2100
• Dark blue shows
the results of a
1.4m sea-level
rise, combined
with a 100-year
flood
55
Sea Level From the Los Angeles Tide Gauge
• Data from PSMSL (Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level)
• Fossil-fuel CO2 emissions during the 2nd half were 3 times the 1st half
• National Academy of Sciences high scenario implies a rise rate that
is 25 times the historical rate
56
Subsidence in Long Beach, California, 1955 ― 9m
• From the Long Beach Historical Society
• Long Beach is the second busiest port in the US, after the port of Los Angeles
• The Wilmington oil field is the third largest in the US
57
Long Beach
Subsidence — 9m
• Picture taken by Roger
Coar in 1959 — his
dog’s name was King
• With the permission of
the Long Beach
Historical Society
58
World Cereal Yield and Area
• From the UN FAO, cereals includes corn, rice, wheat, barley, rye, oats, ...
• Evolution of the food supply is complex — some corn now goes to ethanol
production
59
2009 Per-Person Food Supply
Region
European Union
Northern America
Africa
South America
Asia
World
Total
Cal/d
Increase
since 1961
Animal
Cal/d
Increase
since 1961
3456
3659
2560
2951
2706
2831
15%
27%
28%
28%
51%
29%
1003
1001
207
665
429
501
21%
-1%
29%
60%
294%
48%
• From the UN FAO
• For our projected levels of CO2 and temperature, the IPCC report judges
the effects of climate change (CO2 fertilization, longer growing season in
high latitudes, increase in rain on average) as positive on balance, giving
10% to 20% cereal yield improvement with adaptation — how one
weighs this increase against other climate-change effects depends on
how much one likes eating 
60
Summary ― Oil, Gas, and Coal
• US crude-oil production has been following a cumulative normal
curve since 1902 — the 1995 USGS/2006 MMS assessment does
not appear to be consistent with production history, but stay
tuned on shale oil
• The projection for long-term world oil and gas production is
consistent with the BP reserves
• Long-term production estimates for coal from geological
reserves are available early, but they are too four times too high
• Projection for long-term world coal production is 2/3 of the
reserves plus cumulative production
• Projection for 90% exhaustion for world oil, gas, and coal is sixty
years from now
61
Summary ― Climate
• So far climate policy does not appear to have affected
world fossil-fuel CO2 emissions significantly
• Chinese coal production completely dominates US coal
production — it is not clear that any US coal-plant policy
can have an effect
• It appears that 2/3 of the eventual CO2 forcing has
already occurred
• It appears that the Copenhagen commitment to a rise of
less than 2C will be met without any climate policy at all
62
Thank You
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sandro Schmidt at the BGR (the German Resources Agency)
Granger Morgan, Melissa Chan, Ed Rubin and Jay Apt at Carnegie-Mellon
Charlie Kennel at the University of California at San Diego
Kevin Bowman and Dimitri Antsos at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
John Rutledge at Freese and Nichols, Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas
Kyle Saunders, Euan Mearns, and Dave Summers at The Oil Drum
Andrew Ferguson at the Optimum Population Trust
Tom Crowley at the University of Edinburgh
Alex Dessler, Andy Dessler, and Jerry North at Texas A&M
Steve Mohr at the University of Technology, Sydney
Steven Schwartz and Ernie Lewis at Brookhaven National Laboratory
Jim Murray at the University of Washington
Many Caltech colleagues, but particularly Bill Bridges, Paul Dimotakis,
David Goodstein, Nadia Lapusta, John Ledyard, Carver Mead, Tapio
Schneider, John Seinfeld, and Tom Tombrello
Special thanks to Sandy Garstang and Shady Peyvan in the Caltech Library,
Tony Diaz in the Caltech Geology Library, and Kent Potter and Dale Yee in the
Caltech Engineering Division for their perseverance and ingenuity in locating
historical coal production and reserves records
63
•
•
•
•
•
David Rutledge is the Tomiyasu Professor of Electrical Engineering at
Caltech, and a former Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied
Science there. He is the author of the textbook Electronics of Radio,
published by Cambridge University Press. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a
winner of the IEEE Microwave Prize, and a winner of the Teaching Award of
the Associated Students at Caltech. He served as the editor for the
Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, and is a founder of the
Wavestream Corporation, the leading manufacturer of high-power
millimeter-wave transmitters for satellite uplinks. In recent years, his
research interest has been in developing methods for estimating fossil-fuel
supplies in the long run, and in understanding the implications.
Copyright © 2007−2012 by David Rutledge
The site http://rutledge.caltech.edu/ has links to the current version of
these slides, an Excel workbook with calculations for the graphs, and a
video from a public lecture. A book is in preparation.
Permission is given to copy this work, provided attribution is given, and
provided that the link http://rutledge.caltech.edu/ is included.
Email contact: Dave.Rutledge@caltech.edu
64