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Zeke Hausfather

@hausfath

9 Oct

A lot of the climate section of the VP debate focused on hydraulic fracturing (e.g. fracking). Its a complex subject – one that I've published a few papers about – and worthy of an exceedingly long twitter thread.

For more, read on! 1/

First, a bit of background about the debate. Fracking primarily occurs on privately owned land, and states rather than the federal gov't have primary jurisdiction over it. That said, the fed gov't can regulate it in some ways (e.g. rules around flaring or fugitive methane). 2/

Fracking is used to produce both oil and natural gas by fracturing shale rocks deep underground. When combined with horizontal drilling it allows for cost-effective extraction of both. 3/

Read 30 tweets

Zeke Hausfather

@hausfath

29 Sep

https://twitter.com/TedNordhaus/status/1310964093105266689

Lets talk a bit about forest management. There is growing acknowledgement among (some) policymakers that we need to tackle the combination of climate change, fuel buildup in our forests, and development in high-risk wildland urban interface areas.

A thread: 1/15

https://twitter.com/TedNordhaus/status/1310964093105266689

First of all, we all acknowledge that climate change has played a major role in making wildfires worse. Human emissions of greenhouse gases have increased spring and summer temperatures by around 2C in the Western U.S. over the past century. 2/15

This has extended both the area and time periods in which forests burn; in parts of California, fire season is now 50 days longer. The recent NCA4 suggested that about half the increase in burned area in the Western U.S. since 1980s can be attributed to a changing climate. 3/15

Read 15 tweets

Zeke Hausfather

@hausfath

24 Sep

There is a lot of confusion about carbon budgets and how quickly emissions need to fall to zero to meet various warming targets. To cut through some of this morass, we can use some very simple emission pathways to explore what various targets would entail. 1/11

Much confusion is due to ambiguity of these targets, role of negative emissions, non-CO2 forcings, historical warming, etc. For example, "well-below" 2C target in the Paris Agreement is often interpreted to mean a 66% chance of avoiding >2C warming. carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-t… 2/11

On the other hand, the 1.5C aspirational target is sometimes defined as a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5C, and sometimes (as in the new SSP1-1.9 scenario) as a 66% chance of avoidance. 3/11

Read 11 tweets

Zeke Hausfather

@hausfath

21 Sep

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1308069248162582529

This article is deeply problematic for a number of reasons. Wildfire risk increased in western US is due to both climate change and poor forest management, much of which is down to Forest Service aggressively extinguishing fires for nearly a century in forests adapted to burn 1/4

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1308069248162582529

Similarly, traditional logging activities do relatively little to reduce fire risk, as what regrows is often more flammable than mature forests. Best tools we have – thinning small trees and brush combined with controlled burns – are not econ viable for the timber industry 2/4

Traditional environmentalists are not without blame here; we need to ensure that pre-commercial thinning and controlled burns are not unduly restricted by environmental regulations. But laying our entire history of poor forest management at their feet is extremely misleading. 3/4

Read 5 tweets

Zeke Hausfather

@hausfath

8 Sep

@NuScale_Power

While renewables will play a large role in decarbonizing electricity, there is also a need for clean firm generation. Advanced reactors are a promising technology to fill that gap, and in a piece today we take a look at economics of @NuScale_Power thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/…

1/12

To be competitive in the short-term, advanced reactors like NuScale need to be reasonably cost-competitive with natural gas – which currently fills the role of firm, dispatchable generation. We compare the two based on their levelized cost of energy (LCOE). 2/12

@Lazard

The LCOE of nuclear, it turns out, is very sensitive to the discount rate used, as it involves a very high upfront investment with very long-term returns over a ~60 year lifetime. Standard LCOE calculations – such as those from @Lazard – use a rather high 10% discount rate. 3/12

Read 12 tweets

Zeke Hausfather

@hausfath

4 Sep

@DanTong12

Neat new paper by Christine Shearer, @DanTong12, @SteveDavisUCI, and others looking at committed emissions from gas-to-coal transition. If gas plants run at high capacity over their lifetime the benefits from coal switching are minimal. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10… 1/3

However, unlike coal, gas plants have relatively low capital costs, and few employees. They can easily have low capacity factors and serve to mostly run during high-price periods where renewable generation is low while being economically viable. 2/3

If we transition to future where gas fills in the gap between clean energy generation – rather than replacing coal's baseload – the committed emissions would likely be much smaller. But this requires policy interventions (carbon price or clean energy standard) to an extent 3/3

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