The Econmist - USA (2021-10-30)

22 Special report Stabilising the climate TheEconomistOctober30th 2021

suit.  But  without  the  certainty  of  a  price  on  carbon  to  constrain

their sense of the possible, it is asking too much of private innova­

tors to expect them to provide all the tools needed. 

Making good the lack requires governments not just to help the

private  sector  through  tax  credits  targeted  at  innovations  which

decarbonise—one  of  the  parts  of  President  Joe  Biden’s  climate

package that seems most likely to pass—but also to find ways to

bridge the gap between research and development and full scale

deployment  with  a  more  serious  commitment  to  large­scale  de­

monstration projects.

The ways in which the emission­free technologies to hand and

yet  to  be  developed  reshape  the  energy  economy  will  be  less

marked than those seen with the advent of coal. In an increasingly

electrified world, sources of energy are less distinctive and more

fungible. The plug does not care where the socket gets its power.

An example is the way today’s grid­linked gigawatt world of sky­

scraper­topping turbines and solar farms spreading over cropland

and desert alike has little place for the putatively innate character­

istics  which  first  attracted  greens  to  solar  panels  and  wind  tur­

bines in the 1970s and 1980s. They saw them as “appropriate” tech­

nologies suited to decentralisation, self­sufficiency and the living

of less industrialised lives.

But  if  renewables  no  longer  have  the  smallness  once  seen  as

beautiful, they have special characteristics

that  come  to  the  fore  the  more  that  grids

depend  on  them.  The  most  obvious  is  in­

termittency.  The  flows  powering  renew­

ables are familiar to the farmer more than

to  the  industrialist.  They  change  with  the

passing of clouds, the turning of Earth, the

rolling of weather fronts, the succession of

seasons and the differences between good

years and bad. 

Dealing with this variation will require

new ways of balancing flows of energy and

storing  it  for  later  use.  As  Robert  Thom  discovered,  you  need  to

have  both  storage  and  a  careful  approach  to  regulating  flows

through  the  system.  But  those  principles  must  be  applied  on

scales both local and continental, and measured in both split sec­

onds and years. Grids need to become larger, to make up for short­

falls  in  wind  or  sun,  and  smarter,  to  balance  demand  to  supply

rather than always working the other way round. To what extent

markets can be designed to provide all this remains an open ques­

tion. But it seems a fair bet that a more centrally planned approach

will often be necessary. 

In  return  renewables  promise  to  provide  grids  and  their  cus­

tomers with a new resistance to scarcity. The overweening power

of coal­miners and oil ministers alike will be broken. With energy

freed  from  physical  fuels  things  will  be  far  harder  for  would­be

rentiers. As in Rothesay, once you have invested, you have guaran­

teed power with minimal operating expenses and minimal risk. 

And  they  should  allow  a  new  form  of  energy­abundant  en­

vironmentalism. Environmentalist worries about growth are not

limited  to  relationships  between  carbon  emissions  and  gdp.

There  are  deeper  worries  that  the  demand  will  break  nature’s

bounds in other ways. But in a world of copious clean energy the

demands industrial civilisation makes of the natural world may in

principle be curbed through reuse and recycling. What some call

the  circularisation  of  the  economy  could  be  spun  round  more

quickly and smoothly. Clean energy need not undermine the cap­

italism that commoditised fossil fuels built. It could still change

its complexion, its political economy and its geopolitical setting.

But it is unlikely to do this in the time demanded byParis. So

the world needs more than an energy system withoutemissions.

It also needs innovation and investment to reverse them.n

The overweening

power of coal-

miners and oil

ministers alike

will be broken

Negativeemissions

IfI couldturnbacktime

T

hirtykilometresdowntheroadfromReykjavik,theHellish­

eiðigeothermalpowerplantsitsamidblackbouldersdraped

inphosphorescentgreenmoss.Behinditsplumesofrisingsteam,

steepmountainssweepupfromtherockyplain.Bouldersand

mountainsalikearemadeofbasalt,asissome90%oftherestof

Iceland.Itisa 300trntonnesawn­offtreestumpofbasaltsitting

ontheflooroftheAtlantic—whichisitselfjustmorebasalt.There

isnocommonerrockinEarth’scrust.

The cylinderof basalt that Kári Helgason is holding out,

though,isdifferent.Youngbasaltisriddledwithtinyholes,butin

thiscasemost cavities arefilledwithflecks ofwhitecrystal.

“This,”hesays,pointingtothewhiteflecks,“ismostlycalcite.”

Calcite,a formofcalciumcarbonate,isnota raremineralonthe

island—itiscommonlyknownasIcelandspar—orelsewhere.But

thisbasalt­boundcalciteisexceptional.It isthephysicalmanifes­

tationofCO 2 emissionsbeingturnedtostone.

SmallamountsofCO 2 arepart­and­parcelofthehotfluids

pipedupfromtheunderlyingcrustatgeothermalpowerstations

likeHellisheiði.Sincetheearly2000s,Carbfix,theIcelandiccom­

panywhere MrHelgason works,hasbeen capturingCO 2 and

pumpingitbackintotheporousbedrockintheformofcarbonat­

edwater.Oncethereitreactswithcalciuminthebasalt.Tracer

studieshaveshownthat95%ofthegasinjectedbyCarbfixismin­

eralisedwithintwoyears.

CarbfixsaysIceland’sbasaltcouldstorea centuryofCO 2 emis­

sions,evenattoday’srate.By 2030 it hopestohavea “mineralstor­

ageterminal”westofReykjavikthatcanpetrify3mtonnesofCO 2 a

year,mostorallofitcapturedatindustrialfacilitiesinEurope.In

early 2021 itsigneda dealwithDan­UnityCO2,a Danishshipping

company,forcustom­madelow­emissiontankerstobringitCO 2

earmarkedfordisposal.

Carboncaptureandstorage(ccs) alongtheselineshasbeena

disappointment.TherearewaystotakeCO 2 outoftheexhaustgas­

esofpowerplantsandsteelworks,andinjectionintobasaltisjust

oneofvariouspossibleplacestostoreit—othersincludegasfields

andsalineaquifers.Theideaofputtingthesetechnologiestogeth­

If negativeemissionsaretoplaya roleinpolicymuchmore

needstobedonetomakethempracticallyachievable

Why negative is necessary

Scenario to stay below 2°C warming , bn tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year

Source:UNEnvironmentProgramme *Fromfossilfuels,industryandland-use changes

-20

0

20

40

60

80

2010 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 2100

Negativeemissions

CO2

Othergreenhousegases

Netemissions*

Existing policies