 |
| Credit: Davis/Socolow |
A recent article in Science Daily shares research findings from a study in the journal, Scientific Research Letters, revealing how commitment accounting of CO2 emissions in the power sector further illuminates the global climate challenge.
 |
| Credit: Davis/Socolow |
The article begins by claiming, "existing power plants around the world will pump out more than 300 billion tons of carbon dioxide over their expected lifetimes, significantly adding to atmospheric levels of the climate-warming gas..." Feeding into this carbon tally whenever we decide to build a new fossil fuel-burning plant, we "commit" at least 40 year's worth of emissions (Assuming an average lifetime of 40 years per power plant). Because more power plants are being built than are being removed, the rate of committed emissions is increasing "by a rate of 4% per year". One of the main points, however, is that as committed emissions have recently leveled off in Europe and the U.S., the worldwide commitment increase is reflective of China and developing world's rapid growth in the power sector. The article also makes mention that over 2/3 of these committed emissions come from coal-burning stations and that the emissions from natural gas-fire generators has increased from 15 to 27% from 1980 to 2012.
The Scientific Research Letters study further outlines the principles of emissions commitment accounting well, adding, "'committed' does not mean inevitable", in that if a power plant were to shut down, it's remaining emissions commitment would go to zero while the realized emissions would remain. The study also illustrates how the commitment accounting model can be incorporated alongside annual emissions measurements into various energy and economic outlook scenarios.
Overall, I think the news article does well in drawing attention to the model of commitment accounting, but falls short in conveying the potential for further utility. In addition to relying heavily on quotes from the researchers and including no figures from the paper, there is no mention of the sources on which the study retrieved power plant emission data. Doing so would have allowed interested readers the opportunity to further investigate committed vs. annual comparisons. Conversely, I felt the original journal article gives a much better introduction to the modeling concept, adding context with explanations for why researchers chose to use a 40 yr lifespan assumption for power plants. Furthermore, a weakness that is not identified by the Science Daily article is that commitment accounting concepts are still in infancy and must be further implemented by a diverse research base before being implemented in public policy debates.
As such, I would give this Science Daily article a rating of 6/10 at best on the "Dan-Bator-Thinks-You-Rock" scale.
References
Science Daily Article
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140826142443.htm
Scientific Research Letters journal article
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/8/084018/article
On a positive note, I liked how the Science Daily article mentioned data regarding multiple countries in the third to last paragraph. Some countries mentioned were perhaps countries not ordinarily mentioned in a report of this type, such as Iran and Indonesia, so I was happy with this brief inclusion.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the article could have also benefitted from discussing specific examples, such as in the case when the article cited a researcher saying "we're investing in technologies that make the problem worse." A mention of at least some specific technologies exacerbating the problem would have helped me understand this portion of the article better. Were they referring to technological refinements on power plants or some other technology?
I agree, that is a good point about this article, too. Drawing attention to influential nations other than China and India who are ramping up their "commitments" shows that the the issue is more widespread than commonly assumed. I would also guess that the "investments" the researchers are referring to would be refinement technologies for plants or methods to reduce current outputs from out-dated powerplants. Either way, I think that the work is more intensive than putting more money into alternative fuels in the long run.
DeleteI personally thought the science daily article did a very good job of summarizing and reporting the peer review journal results. I do not think it is the job of the science daily writer to include detailed summaries of the data mining procedures used by the scientists or to expand further on the conclusions made in the peer reviewed article. In fact, I think that is what usually leads to bad science reporting skewed by adding personal agenda or bias. Also, adding data sources into what is supposed to be a popular media article would be overkill. If people are that interested, then they should refer back to the original literature, which science daily always cites in their articles.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteYes, I, like many students before me, appear to be prone to being over-critical of articles like these. I think it could be because when looking for comparisons, it is often easier to point out the flaws sometimes than the strengths and that message comes across in an overly harsh review. After stepping away for a little while, I do admit that my review is a bit too harsh and that this article does live up to it's job of giving a succinct snapshot of the issues.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIs it the case where a few powerplants, probably in developing countries, are contributing the majority of emissions? Or are the emissions that the article expects pretty widely distributed between developed and developing countries?
ReplyDeleteI also saw this article that says that renewable energies are growing faster in emerging markets than in developed nations, so im wondering if these large energy emissions will become more common in developed countries.
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/29/developing-nations-represent-significant-growth-global-clean-energy/
One thing I'm having a little bit of a hard time understanding is what does this model provide that other CO2 emission models haven't?
ReplyDeleteI was asking myself the same question when I first read this article. The committed emissions model offers a different way to approach emissions accounting. Rather than looking at emissions every year via annual emissions, committed emissions models give a projected value for each new powerplant built given its assumed lifetime. It allows policymakers and scientists to consider basically, "how long we have to deal with what we've just spent billions of dollars on."
ReplyDeleteIt also is important to not that it is not a "realized" amount and that if retrofitting decommissioning of power plants occurs, the remaining committed emission projections can be disregarded.
Delete