The biggest climate impact of the new IRA bill is also one of the most under-appreciated: demand destruction for fossil fuels.
US oil and gas consumption has almost always gone up. Now we are quickly moving toward a world where clean energy is so cheap, demand will peak and fall
Even before the IRA a number of analysts (including some oil majors) were projecting peak oil demand between 2025 and 2030; this will help further accelerate a global transition away from fossil fuels.
Falling US oil and gas demand substantially changes the equation going forward. It means that fossil fuel prices will likely fall as demand declines, which in turn has big implications for supply.
Even though the IRA bill unfortunately includes provisions opening up areas for fossil fuel development, an oil company today is going to have second thoughts developing high-cost offshore drilling that might take seven years to come onto the market.
In other words, the (much stronger) parts of the IRA that make clean energy cheap effectively undermine the provisions that enable additional fossil fuel supply, as supply will only be developed if enough demand exists to make it cost-effective.
And while the US will make up for some reduced domestic demand through additional fossil fuel exports, our export capacity for gas is limited and the dramatic growth of EVs globally will disadvantage relatively high-cost US oil.
So while I wish we didn't have some provisions in the bill that support oil and gas development, I'm a lot less worried about them because the parts of the bill that reduce demand for fossil fuels are so strong.
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Frontier has committed nearly $1 billion over the next decade as an advanced market commitment to permanent CDR, which the IPCC notes is a “necessary element” along with deep emissions reductions to achieve our most ambitious climate goals:
As my colleague @FraukeKracke explains, while we are excited to see applications across a wide variety of CDR pathways, there are a few areas in particular that are promising but still somewhat under-explored:
Provocative piece in today's @nytimes criticizing spending on CCS in the new climate bill. There are parts I agree with – criticism of CCS for electricity generation (particularly coal) and its use for enhanced oil recovery – and parts I do not. nytimes.com/2022/08/16/opi…
A thread:
First, the authors highlight the historical challenge that CCS has had in the US, with many failed projects over the last few decades (primarily coal with CCS projects). Clean coal is rightly derided as a concept, and coal with CCS is unlikely to be economic in the future.
The authors note that renewables provide a better alternative to CCS for electricity today, and this is generally true. But once we have mostly wind and solar on the grid the value of clean firm generation increases substantially, as @JesseJenkins@DrChrisClack and others find.
Our quarterly state of the climate is out at @CarbonBrief for Q2 2022:
⬆ Warmest June since records began over land
⬆ 2022 on track to be around the 5th warmest year
⬇ Record low Antarctic sea ice carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-c…
While we often focus on global average temperature changes, no one lives in the global average. Land temperatures can be more representative of the climate changes most people experience and, on land, 2022 saw the warmest June temperatures since records began in the late 1850s.
2022 is running a bit warmer than 2021, but a bit cooler than 2020, 2016, 2015, and 2019 given persistent La Nina conditions in the tropical Pacific that tend to result in slightly cooler global temperatures:
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is not the same as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), and we need to stop inaccurately conflating the two.
CDR removes atmospheric CO2. Its carbon negative.
CCS (w/fossil fuels) reduces the amount of CO2 emitted. It's at best carbon neutral.
CDR refers to anything that draws down atmospheric CO2 and removes it for some period. This includes planting trees, enhancing soil carbon, biomass carbon removal, ocean biomass sinking, enhanced rock weathering, ocean alkalinity enhancement, and direct air capture among others.
CCS is the process of capturing CO2 before it enters the atmosphere, generally from a point source like a power plant. CCS is rarely perfect, meaning that there are some residual lifecycle emissions remaining, though its a lot better than unmitigated fossil fuel use!
And, of course, the team over at @carbonplanorg has an excellent interactive explainer about the need for deeper soil carbon sampling to assess real changes from tillage: carbonplan.org/research/soil-…
Meeting our climate goals first and foremost requires deep emissions reductions. Any claim that CDR is a silver bullet is deeply problematic. In general we should be extremely skeptical of any claims of >10% removals and <90% reductions at net-zero CO2:
Why is carbon removal needed in the first place, and why can’t we just stop climate change by getting to “absolute zero” emissions? The recent UN report identifies four different roles for CDR meeting our most ambitious climate goals: 3/