Person:

Keith, David

Estimates of the global wind power resource over land range from 56 to 400 TW. Most estimates have implicitly assumed that extraction of wind energy does not alter large-scale winds enough to significantly limit wind power production. Estimates that ignore the effect of wind turbine drag on local winds have assumed that wind power production of 2–4 W m2 can be sustained over large areas. New results from a mesoscale model suggest that wind power production is limited to about 1 W m2 at wind farm scales larger than about 100 km2. We find that the mesoscale model results are quantitatively consistent with results from global models that simulated the climate response to much larger wind power capacities. Wind resource estimates that ignore the effect of wind turbines in slowing large-scale winds may therefore substantially overestimate the wind power resource.

Developing long-term carbon control strategies is important in energy intensive industries such as the oil sands operations in Alberta. We examine the use of cogeneration to satisfy the energy demands of oil sands operations in Alberta in the context of carbon management. This paper evaluates the role of cogeneration in meeting Provincial carbon management goals and discusses the arbitrary character- istics of facility- and product-based carbon emissions control regulations. We model an oil sands operation that operates with and without incorporated cogeneration. We compare CO2 emissions and associated costs under different carbon emissions control regulations, including the present carbon emissions control regulation of Alberta. The results suggest that incorporating cogeneration into the growing oil sands industry could contribute in the near-term to reducing CO2 emissions in Alberta. This analysis also shows that the different accounting methods and calculations of electricity offsets could lead to very different levels of incentives for cogeneration. Regulations that attempt to manage emissions on a product and facility basis may become arbitrary and complex as regulators attempt to approximate the effect of an economy-wide carbon price.

Solar radiation management (SRM), a form of geoengineering, might be used to offset some fraction of the anthropogenic radiative forcing of climate as a means to reduce climate change, but the risks and effectiveness of SRM are uncertain. We examine the possibility of testing SRM through sub-scale deployment as a means to test models of climate response to SRM and explore risks prior to full-scale implementation. Contrary to some claims, this could provide meaningful tests of the climate’s response to SRM within a decade. We use idealized simulations with the HadCM3L general circulation model (GCM) to estimate the response to SRM and signal-to-noise ratio for global-scale SRM forcing tests, and quantify the trade-offs between duration and intensity of the test and it’s ability to make quantitative measurements of the climate’s response to SRM forcing. The response at long time-scales would need to be extrapolated from results measured by a short-term test; this can help reduce the uncertainty associated with relatively rapid climate feedbacks, but uncertainties that only manifest at long time-scales can never be resolved by such a test. With this important caveat, the transient climate response may be bounded with 90% confidence to be no more than (1.5^{\circ} C) higher than it’s estimated value, in a single decade test that used roughly 1/10th the radiative forcing perturbation of a (CO_2)-doubling. However, tests could require several decades or longer to obtain accurate response estimates, particularly to understand the response of regional hydrological fields which are critical uncertainties. Some fields, like precipitation over land, have as large a response to short period forcing as to slowly- varying changes. This implies that the ratio of the hydrological to the temperature response that results from a sustained SRM deployment will differ from that of either a short-duration test or that which has been observed to result from large volcanic eruptions.

If implementation of proposals to engineer the climate through solar-radiation management (SRM) ever occurs, it is likely to be contingent on climate sensitivity. However, modelling studies examining the effectiveness of SRM as a strategy to offset anthropogenic climate change have used only the standard parameterizations of atmosphere–ocean general circulation models that yield climate sensitivities close to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project mean. Here, we use a perturbed-physics ensemble modelling experiment to examine how the response of the climate to SRM implemented in the stratosphere (SRM-S) varies under different greenhouse-gas climate sensitivities. When SRM-S is used to compensate for rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, its effectiveness in stabilizing regional climates diminishes with increasing climate sensitivity. However, the potential of SRM-S to slow down unmitigated climate change, even regionally, increases with climate sensitivity. On average, in variants of the model with higher sensitivity, SRM-S reduces regional rates of temperature change by more than 90% and rates of precipitation change by more than 50%.

Although solar radiation management (SRM) through stratospheric aerosol methods has the potential to mitigate impacts of climate change, our current knowledge of stratospheric processes suggests that these methods may entail significant risks. In addition to the risks associated with current knowledge, the possibility of ‘unknown unknowns’ exists that could significantly alter the risk assessment relative to our current understanding. While laboratory experimentation can improve the current state of knowledge and atmospheric models can assess large-scale climate response, they cannot capture possible unknown chemistry or represent the full range of interactive atmospheric chemical physics. Small-scale, in situ experimentation under well-regulated circumstances can begin to remove some of these uncertainties. This experiment—provisionally titled the stratospheric controlled perturbation experiment—is under development and will only proceed with transparent and predominantly governmental funding and independent risk assessment. We describe the scientific and technical foundation for performing, under external oversight, small-scale experiments to quantify the risks posed by SRM to activation of halogen species and subsequent erosion of stratospheric ozone. The paper's scope includes selection of the measurement platform, relevant aspects of stratospheric meteorology, operational considerations and instrument design and engineering.

Solar engineering and other exceptionally ambitious new technologies to deal with the reality of rising global temperatures come riddled with uncertainties. To illustrate how complex the problem is and what kind of challenges lie ahead, here are three contrasting, and somewhat fantastical, scenarios.

Interest in compressed air energy storage (CAES) technology has been renewed driven by the need to manage variability form rapidly growing wind and solar capacity. Distributed CAES (D-CAES) design aims to improve the efficiency of conventional CAES through locating the compressor near concentrated heating loads so capturing additional revenue through sales of compression waste heat. A pipeline transports compressed air to the storage facility and expander, co-located at some distance from the compressor. The economics of CAES are strongly dependant on electricity and gas markets in which they are embedded. As a case study, we evaluated the economics of two hypothetical merchant CAES and D-CAES facilities performing energy arbitrage in Alberta, Canada using market data from 2002 to 2011. The annual profit of the D-CAES plant was $1.3 million more on average at a distance of 50 km between the heat load and air storage sites. Superior economic and environmental performance of D-CAES led to a negative abatement cost of −$40/tCO2e. We performed a suite of sensitivity analyses to evaluate the impact of size of heat load, size of air storage, ratio of expander to compressor size, and length of pipeline on the economic feasibility of D-CAES.

Clean energy innovation cannot be left to the market alone, nor can it be achieved by governments that dodge hard decisions by spreading funds to all. Winning the clean-energy innovation game requires industry and government to focus resources on a small set of industrial clusters.

Solar geoengineering (or Solar Radiation Management, SRM) refers to any intentional, large-scale manipulation of the Earth's incoming solar radiation to offset some of the effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, reducing the associated risks from climate changes. Examples of such methods are injecting aerosols into the stratosphere or increasing marine cloud reflectivity, both of which would reflect some sunlight back to space. There are many serious concerns associated with any such approach, and also many challenges. One often overlooked aspect in geoengineering research is that this is a control problem, requiring (a) feedback of the observed climate state to manage significant uncertainty in both the radiative forcing and the climate's dynamic response to this forcing, and (b) optimization of the distribution of radiative effect to minimize regional disparities as well as side-effects from the geoengineering implementation. We present recent progress on control for this challenging problem, building on [1, 2], and discuss open research gaps. This is the first time an explicit external feedback loop has been implemented in a fully coupled general circulation model of the Earth's climate.

We report the results of the first large-scale international survey of public perception of geoengineering and solar radiation management (SRM). Our sample of 3105 individuals in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom was recruited by survey firms that administer internet surveys to nationally representative population samples. Measured familiarity was higher than expected, with 8% and 45% of the population correctly defining the terms geoengineering and climate engineering respectively. There was strong support for allowing the study of SRM. Support decreased and uncertainty rose as subjects were asked about their support for using SRM immediately, or to stop a climate emergency. Support for SRM is associated with optimism about scientific research, a valuing of SRM's benefits and a stronger belief that SRM is natural, while opposition is associated with an attitude that nature should not be manipulated in this way. The potential risks of SRM are important drivers of public perception with the most salient being damage to the ozone layer and unknown risks. SRM is a new technology and public opinions are just forming; thus all reported results are sensitive to changes in framing, future information on risks and benefits, and changes to context.