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How would climate negotiations run under
the assumption of a fivefold increase of
energy productivity?
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Dean emeritus
Bren School of Environmental Science and Management
University of California Santa Barbara
Let us dramatize the nature of the
climate challenge
Correlation between CO2 (blue) and (Antarctic)
temperatures (red) over 650.000 years
The third parameter going with CO2 concentrations
is the sea level
Italy during the
last Ice Age (20 000
years ago)
.... and during the last
Hot Age (2 million
years ago)
Also the US is
vulnerable.
Sea level rise can take catastrophic speed!
(after Michael Tooley. Global sea-levels: floodwaters mark sudden rise. Nature 342
(6245), p 20 - 21 1989)
Freshwater lakes on Greenland
during Summers 1992 and 2002
.
Stern Review: BAU (blue) vs. stabilising at 450 ppm CO2 (red)
The longer you wait, the more radical changes are needed
Source: Investing in Cimate Change 2009 (Deutsche Bank, October 2008)
Noah‘s Arch, 2009
Why are so many people thinking we should first become
rich and deal with climate problems later? It is the
convenient paradigm of the Kuznets curve of pollution
Conventional wisdom: More wealth, more carbon intensity
Escaping from this logic means we need a „Kuznets Curve“ of
decarbonization!
„rich and
carbon free“
How do we get there?
Three options exist:
•Reduce carbon intensity of energy
•Reduce energy intensity of wealth
•Reduce wealth
Conventional thinking suggests
•70% Reduce carbon intensity of energy
(renewable energies, nuclear, CCS)
•15% Reduce energy intensity of wealth
•15% Reduce wealth (“we all have to
pay a painful price”)
I suggest this distribution:
•30% Reduce carbon intensity of energy
•65% Reduce energy intensity of wealth
•5% Reduce wealth (such as weekend
hopping to Teneriffa or Bahamas)
The EU, of course, embraces renewables. But (realistically)
they
foresee flattening after 2020 (EU Vision 2050)
Source: EU-27 Renewable Energy Growth, Dec. 2007
The same EU Vision 2050 envisions a threefold increase of
energy productivity
Source: Vision2050 for the EU 27, Brussels Dec. 2007
Let me now explain why I am so
optimistic about energy efficiency - which is the meaning of
“reduce energy intensity of wealth”.
The win-win options relate to efficiency, not renewables
Source: MacKinsey & Vattenfall 2007
Imagine a bucket
of water weighing
twenty pounds.
How many
kilowatthours
would you need to
lift that bucket
from sea level
up to the top of
Mount Everest?
1 kwh
Assuming that one Wattsecond (Ws) is equivalent to
one Newton-meter, (1 Joule)
the answer is:
One quarter of a
kilowatt-hour!
(= 900.000 Ws)
“Factor Four” (1995) offered fifty examples of
quadrupling resource productivity
Amory Lovins‘ Hypercar is up to seven times more fuel
efficient than today‘s cars
Hypercar
1,2 l/100km
Today‘s cars
6-10 l/100km
Energy efficiency
House in the Alps
Amory Lovins‘ Rocky
Mountain Institute
Heating efficiency
Solar „passive houses“ save 90% of heating costs
Refurbishing existing buildings
Upper row: Photographs
Lower: Thermograms
Energy efficiency in office buildings
The Donald Bren
School, a Platinum
LEED building
Energy & water efficiency
From incandescent to fluorescent lightbulbs
Energieeffizienz
And from fluorescent light bulbs to solid state lighting
Energy efficiency
From rotten trains to high speed trains
Typically, however, a factor of four
is unattainable if we look at
efficiency of simple processes.
Bigger gains come in when
optimizing complex systems. Here,
we talk about productivity
„Productivity“ is much richer than „efficiency“
Productivity
is about networks
and cascades
Efficiency
is inside
a box (e.g.
mpg)
Strawberry yoghurt logistics: 1500 instead of 8000 kilometres
From urban sprawl to high density cities
Space and energy efficiency
Seasonal diets, organic farming, a little less meat
Video conferences can replace some business travel
Energy- and material
efficiency
The real problem is the rebound effect
It was first described by William
S. Jevon’s in his 1865 book,
The Coal Question, where he
observed that England's consumption of coal soared after James
Watt introduced his coal-fired
steam engine, which greatly
improved the efficiency over
earlier steam pumps.
Since the 1980s, the rebound
effect is often called the
Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate.
Rebound effect in
the USA:
Energy intensity
down, total
energy consumption up.
SUV‘s,
urban sprawl,
electronics boom.
Overcoming the rebound effect with economic instruments
Regulation
Economic Instruments
Technological
efficiency gains,
Adding a price tag on consumption:
networks and cascades get leaner
mostly inside the box
Efficiency
Changing technological paradigms
Old:
Increasing
labour
productivity
New:
Increasing
resource
productivity
If labour productivity has increased
twentyfold since 1850, it is not utopian to
think of resource productivity increasing
tenfold in 100 years and fivefold in 50 years!
What was the main driving force for the steady
increase of labor productivity?
Economists would say it was labor cost.
And what was the main driving force for the twentyfold increase of wages?
Economists would say it was labor productivity
Labor productivity rose in parallel with labor costs
Labor poductivity rose in parallel with labor costs
This suggests a strategy of actively elevating
energy prices in parallel with energy productivity increases
Because market prices of resources do the opposite: the decline!
(Industrial commodity & energy prices, in constant dollars)
The last 5 years
Ecotaxes can reverse the trend in transport emissions
+18
Percent changes
against 1994
14
3
2
2
5
4
2
5
3
13
11
11
7
7
9
4
15 13
15
+15
14
12
Eco
lo g
ica
5
l Ta
xR
3
efo
rm
1
0
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
-2
Reference: UNFCC 2005
The sequel to Factor Four will be published in 2009
and will be called
Authors: Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Charlie
Hargroves and Michael Smith (Brisbane)
Main features of Factor Five:
• updated
• more ambitious
• focus on Asia
• renewable energies
• focus on systems and cascades
• appropriate steering instruments
• vision of a new Kondratiev cycle
The sixth Kondratiev: Resource productivity
(after Charlie Hargroves, Brisbane, Australia)
Biotech
IT
TV, aviation,
computers,
Electricity,
chemicals,cars
Steel &
railroads
Mechanization
Resource
productivity,
renew. energy,
system design,
remanufact.,
biomimicry
Cinese PM Wen
Jiabao:
Energy efficiency
and environment
at the heart of
technology and
growth
As one consequence, an international Task
Force
Economic Instruments for Energy Efficiency
and the Environment
was established at the China Council, - which
I am co-chairing .
And last week, I was learning that China will
now go agead with an Ecological Tax
Reform!
3 options of climate diplomacy
1. Voluntarism
2. „Kyoto Plus“
3. Per capita equal emission rights
1. Voluntarism: The Bush White House NonStrategy. Ridiculous!
2. Kyoto Plus: The EU strategy, a good-will
package of eight points to demonstrate to the
world that well-being can be decoupled from CO2
emissions. And some money for the poor.
This was essentially agreed as the basis for
Copenhagen 2009
3. Per capita equal emission rights
Promoted by the Indian PM Manmohan
Singh. In my view the only strategy that has a
chance really to mitigate global warming. It
means we from the North would have to go
shopping for emission rights in the South.
This would make it instantaneously profitable
in China and India and elsewhere to become
very energy efficient. Hundreds of powerplant
plans would be scrapped.
PM Manmohan Singh
favours per capita
equal emission rights
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, 30.8.07, at the Nikkei Symposium in Tokyo, and later in New Delhi supported the idea!
But the idea never made it to the negotiating table.
Contraction and Convergence could bring developing countries on board
So let me end by saying: if all countries
were already sold to the idea of Factor
Five improvements of energy efficiency,
there would be no fear of per capita
equal emeission rights.