Gal Luft on crude/carbon

Gal Luft, author of Turning Oil Into Salt (which I reviewed at length in November), has a new column in Foreign Policy whose subtitle speaks for itself:

Since the world can't seem to agree on cutting carbon emissions, maybe it's time to try an easier but equally important target: oil.

Why oil, in the wake of the lack of concrete progress at Copenhagen?

This pushback by the developing world begs for a unified, yet politically feasible, agenda that can be embraced by rich and poor countries alike. One area where such an agenda can emerge is oil. Whereas reaching consensus about significant cuts in the use of fossil fuels in power generation seems to be unlikely, focusing on reducing the use of oil, which powers 95 percent of the global transportation sector, is a goal that offers a real chance of global acceptance (with the exception of certain oil-exporting countries, of course).

His proposals center on the Open Fuel Standard with which readers of his book or my review will be familiar. However, he focuses on flex-fuel vehicles and downplays the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) which would be central to the electrification of transport. Perhaps this is because the current cost arguments for PHEVs are much weaker, and he doesn't wish to draw attention to that weakness in his overall thesis. In any case, I assert that my previous conclusion holds:

... despite [the authors'] attitude and the optimism it engenders, in the end they do not illuminate a line of sight to the day that PHEVs will be cost-competitive with normal cars. And without that, their OFS story is basically a biofuels (or other hydrocarbon-to-liquids fuels) story... and is that really that revolutionary?

After Copenhagen? Cochabamba

Depressed about the failure of Copenhagen? Bolivian president Evo Morales isn't:

On Tuesday, Morales called the Copenhagen summit "a triumph of the people" because "the presidents came, proposed and went without hearing, but this time they could not impose their declaration."

It's not that he's not concerned about the earth, he just has an alternate solution in mind:

Bolivian President Evo Morales said Tuesday he's inviting activists, scientists and government officials from around the world to an alternative climate conference following the failure of a summit in Copenhagen to produce binding agreements.

The leftist leader said the April 20-22 meeting in Cochabamba will include indigenous peoples, social movements, environmentalists and scientists as well as governments "who want to work with their people."

Morales said the meeting is meant partly to pressure industrialized nations to accept that they have a "climate debt" to poor countries and will work toward an international court on environmental crimes.

Other topics will include a "universal proposal for the rights of mother earth" and the transfer of technology.

Stavins on Copenhagen

Robert Stavins breaks down the Copenhagen Accord in some depth. Overall he seems guardedly optimistic with what emerged at the last minute, and reminds us that

The climate change policy process is best viewed as a marathon, not a sprint.

Update: Jeff Sachs, on the other hand, is not happy (and specifically unhappy with Obama). And neither are greentech businesses, as carbon prices fall in response - definitely not a good sign for the prospects of a strong international carbon market any time soon.

Via Mankiw and Environmental Capital.


Update 2: Sachs' nemesis Bill Easterly is similarly unimpressed, but thinks expectations were far from realistic.

Regarding carbon markets, prices were down ~10% - substantial, but not an unmitigated disaster. This is a highly unscientific comparison, but note that at current exchange rates these prices are around $15/ton of CO2e, compared to a proposed cap of $28/ton in the early years of Waxman-Markey, so we are still very much in the same ballpark.

Copenhagen in a sentence

Via Tim Haab at Environmental Economics:

Technologies to cut back carbon dioxide emissions from factories and vehicles that feed the global economy add costs to fuel, food and more, an option that appeals neither to industrial nations struggling with the global economic meltdown or developing nations trying to ramp up economic growth.