C02 savings art worthy but futile

We can “save so many tonnes of CO2” if we don’t jet off on holiday, or don’t use incandescent light bulbs and so on and so forth. Yet there seems to be a major flaw in these concepts and actions. They seem to be creating savings in theory only. They’re bookkeeping savings. Here’s why:

The amount of person-made CO2 going to the atmosphere depends on the amount of hydrocarbons (for brevity, “oil” from here on includes oil, coal and gas) burned in the world for energy production. It doesn’t matter whether the oil is used by individuals at an efficiency of 1% or of 99% to produce energy. If world oil production goes up, so does CO2 in a fixed ratio. That is to say, the important figure is what the oil companies are projecting for the next few years’ production.

Energy-efficient light bulbs, hybrid cars, improved home insulation, windmills etc – none of these makes a difference to worldwide emissions if the market for oil is constantly expanding, because as energy-poor people (such as those in China, India, Africa and poor Westerners) become wealthier, they use the oil saved by energy efficiency measures, nuclear power and alternative energy in more advanced countries. This is socially just, but the atmosphere does not have a social conscience.

So what can be done to reduce CO2 effects on climate? There are three phases in oil usage: extraction, combustion and exhaustion (CO2 exhaust to the atmosphere). At present governments and individuals are obsessed with the middle “combustion” phase, which is where individuals are in contact with oil and feel they can act. This is also, for governments, fortuitously where they can tax individuals while lecturing them. This increasing taxation is ineffectual in reducing CO2 production worldwide and is discriminatory.

The first and last phases are actually where action should be concentrated. If the climate change situation becomes critical then, quite simply, oil production (first phase) could be reduced. This would be achieved by closing well-head valves and mothballing refineries. Simple. If energy efficiency measures at present being promoted as a solution are effective then oil production will fall. Yet we never hear when this is likely to happen!

The same goes for “carbon trading” – until the vast majority of the world is involved how can this bring about a reduction in oil production?

The last phase (exhaust of CO2) is where the gas can be sequestered or removed from the atmosphere, at, for example, power stations, and stored underground indefinitely. This is being done already by Norway, and a power plant in Scotland was scheduled to store its CO2 gases under the North Sea, but the UK government scandalously withdrew support.

“Carbon offset” is not worthy of more than a mention here as it seems too flawed as a concept.

I add, as a matter of interest, a typical

engineer’s “back-of-envelope” calculation for

carbon neutral houses in the UK, and their

maximum “bookkeeping” CO2 savings in worldwide context:

The UK contribution annually to world atmospheric human CO2 production is 2% of the total; say housing is half of that giving 1%; say housing renewal rate is 1%. Therefore each year, a saving of 1% times 1% = 1% x 0.01 is made, giving 0.01% (ie 0.0001% of world CO2 production) – if all new UK houses were to be carbon neutral, which of course they won’t be. (And China’s annual increase would absorb this in two days.)

Therefore in 20 years the UK could hope to “save” less than 0.20% of annual worldwide CO2 emissions. Because any savings in oil consumption made in the UK would in fact be absorbed by increases in usage in China and elsewhere, worldwide CO2 emissions would be unaffected in reality. Carbon neutral housing is a social good, so worth doing, but the atmosphere does not care, unfortunately in this or any other case.

The above arguments are simplified for brevity, but they illustrate the basic idea that the individual (or single nation) is at present powerless to reduce worldwide carbon emissions.

Bruce Latimer, chartered environmentalist, chartered engineer