PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBAL EMISSIONS
 "In a world where fossil fuels provides
more than 80 percent of energy, what would it take to go completely green? Could the world switch over to power from only the wind, sun, waves, and heat from the Earth in only a few decades?" - Mason Inman (National Geographic News)  |
As was indicated by the “Blue Map” from the IEA Energy Technology Perspectives in 2008, a broad range of low-carbon technologies will be needed to correct these unsustainable global trends in energy supply and use. The IEA mentions specifically that increased energy efficiency coupled with new low-carbon technologies will necessarily be pieces of any pragmatic global energy solution. For example, given the dependence of countless vital goods and services on fossil fuels, the inability of most renewable energy systems to deliver without fossil fuel “back-up” sources for when they will inevitably go offline, and the fact that many industries require fossil fuel combustion in order to function – new and innovative solutions are needed to cut the emissions from these required fossil fuel uses.
The efficiency of many fossil fuel uses, however, remains well below what should be expected given present technologies. Beyond the possible gains from improving efficiency, the deployment of renewable energy technologies will serve to reduce the amount of new fossil fuel energy production facilities needed to meet rising global energy demands and the need to replace aging production facilities. However, simply deploying renewables and efficiency measures do not offer an economically viable solution to the current problem.
| The issue therefore is how to minimize the impact of inevitable fossil fuel uses. During the lifecycle of a fossil fuel, there are three places where its emissions impact can be reduced. The first is during the extraction of the fuel from the ground. Methane emissions are extremely important in terms of their impact on the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere as one molecule of methane (CH4) traps twenty times more heat than one molecule of carbon dioxide (CO2). Nearly all non-gaseous hydrocarbon deposits, notably coal, oil, and bitumen/peat contain sizable amounts of methane – i.e. natural gas – and while these gases were often vented in the industry’s early years, most savvy producers attempt to capture and use or even sell these former by-products of extraction.
However, what many people might not realize is that many hydrocarbon fields contain CO2 as well and as there are few uses for CO2 on a production site, the CO2 is normally vented directly into the atmosphere. Some fields, especially many of the newer fields that are being discovered offshore of Brazil and in Southeast Asia, have very high CO2 levels and in some cases CO2 can represent upwards of four fifths of a natural gas deposit. Transporting and selling natural gas demands decreasing this high CO2 content down to two percent and so the rest must be separated during the processing phase. This remaining CO2 should compulsorily be either stored in the subsurface or used in industrial applications.
| In addition to the gas separated from natural gas during processing, petroleum based products can also represent sizable processing emissions. While the implied CO2 footprint from processing more traditional crude oil already is seen as an issue needing attention, processing heavier crudes, oil sands (bitumen), or converting other hydrocarbons like coal or natural gas into liquids (e.g. coal-to-liquids [CTL] or gas-to-liquids [GTL]) represent large emission impacts.
Many OECD member states recognize the environmental impacts of using and processing these types of unconventional fuels and have moved to block their development domestically or at least to require strict emission reduction standards, this is not the case in many developing countries where the demand for the cheap energy is high and access to conventional (i.e. cleaner) fossil fuel feedstocks is limited. As such, economically viable processing solutions are needed to prevent these inevitable emissions from entering the atmosphere. Lastly, in many cases the burning of fossil fuels is needed to produce key materials. For example, both iron/steel and cement industries rely on fossil fuel combustion. These and other end-use sectors requiring fossil fuels need solutions to reduce their impact on global emission levels. |
 CCS proves to be the only solution available to many of these processes and industries so as to reduce emissions and avoid potentially high emission taxes/fees, which are likely to eventually arise to arrest current rates of emissions growth, under many national or even international regulatory frameworks.
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