The Bear Growls, The EU Grovels: Adventures in the European Gas Market
By Donald Hertzmark -- November 6, 2009Among those hoping that global warming is real we should now count the EU. As winter approaches there is, quelle surprise, the initial hint of yet another gas supply crisis between Russia, Ukraine and Russia’s EU customers. The problem is that those pesky pipelines have to go through somewhere to reach the market and that somewhere happens to be the Ukraine (unless it’s Poland, more on that later).
Source: US DOE, for better map resolution
All those red lines running Northeast-to-Southwest carry gas from Russia to the EU countries. There is just no getting around the Ukraine for most of the transits; it is big and (if you are Russian) in the wrong place.
Gas: The Great Green Hope for Europe
As noted previously, gas use in Europe is roughly the same as that of the US, a bit over 20 tcf annually. …
Continue ReadingDOE Secretary Chu’s Convoluted Climate Economics
By Marlo Lewis -- November 5, 2009Last week, at the first Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on S. 1733, the Kerry-Boxer “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu explained the economic rationale for adopting a Kyoto-style cap-and-trade program.
His argument, in a nutshell, goes like this:
- Reducing emissions globally will require a massive investment in “clean technologies” — an estimated $2.1 trillion in wind turbines and $1.5 trillion in solar voltaic panels by 2030. These investments will create many green jobs.
- “The only question is — which countries will invent, manufacture, and export these clean technologies and which will become dependent on foreign products.”
- The United States is falling behind. “The world’s largest turbine manufacturing company is headquartered in Denmark. 99 percent of the batteries that power America’s hybrid cars are made in Japan.
The Economics of Climate Change: Essential Knowledge
By Jerry Taylor -- November 4, 2009The slow moving Senate debate over climate change offers an opportunity to revisit the fundamentals of climate change. While the physical science about natural and anthropogenic forcings is the place to start, the economics of climate change is highly relevant for the policy debate. In this regard, a perfectly timed literature review in the Spring 2009 The Journal of Economic Perspectives is worth studying.
There have been 13 – count them, 13 – studies published in the peer reviewed literature that have wrestled with the economic implications of a doubling of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GhGs) on a CO2-equivalent basis. Those 13 studies have yielded 14 estimates of what will subsequently happen to global GDP. For those who are curious, 10 of those studies assume a subsequent warming of 2.5 C; two assume that a 1 C warming would follow; and two assume a 3 C warming would follow. …
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