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UN Panel: “Renewables could supply 80% of the world’s energy by 2050”

Energy Policy and Game Theory

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ((an organization staffed by two distinct United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization and the World Heath Organization)), has issued a report estimating that 80% of the world’s energy needs could be met by renewable sources by 2050. Link to Report, including video (0:3:37) of Ottmar Ettenhafer, chair of the IPCC, regarding the report.

We believe that barriers are not ultimately economic or technical, but political, social, and attitudinal.  Since we’d prefer to think that most people don’t wish the ill effects of climate change on their grandchildren – or would take that bet with any bookmaker (what our British cousins call a “turf accountant”), putting the lives of those they know will outlive them at risk,  we prefer to think that it’s some form of social acquiescence – less politely, “groupthink,” rather than avarice, which leads to dismissal of concerns about global warming. Viz this excerpt from a post we found on the Peak Energy blog.  This is from a column by Paddy Manning, business columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald:

From Corporate leaders in a climate of disbelief

Scepticism hung heavy in the air. At a packed Australian Institute of Company Directors lunch on climate change, the institute’s former chief executive, Ian Dunlop – a petroleum engineer who was a Shell executive and now is the deputy convener of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil – rose to put a question to keynote speaker, David Mortimer, the chairman of Leighton Holdings, the world’s biggest contract coalminer.

In full, Dunlop’s question ran for three minutes: ”The temperature increase we’ve seen so far is about 0.8 degrees Celsius. We’ve already seen a clear trend in extreme weather events related to just that increase. We probably have locked in already a temperature increase of around 2.4 degrees. If we were to follow the path that you’re suggesting in terms of continued fossil fuel usage to 2030, the likely outcome will be a temperature increase somewhere between 4 and 6 degrees. That probably means world population drops to a carrying capacity of somewhere around a billion people (you can argue 1 to 2 billion).

We  recommend reading Manning’s excellent reporting on Dunlop’s presentation. But we’d like to put the question another way, strictly as a thought exercise in two parts.

Part 1: A Wager on Climate Change

1. A 1% probability that serious consequences will be the result of continuing our current energy policies;
2. If – on the 1% probability that the “alarmists” are right – in which case this isn’t something rapidly reversible ;
3. Would you take a 1% bet – even if it paid 5,000 to 1 – if the loss meant the death or impoverishment of your grandchildren?
4. How much does your moral calculus change if it someone else’s children -someone else you don’t know and will never know?

Part 2: Who Gets To Play?

1. We’re all making this wager with our actions – but certain groups of us – people with the most to gain with the continued use of non-renewables
2. If this is, in effect, a multiplayer version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma ((See Wikipedia’s excellent introduction to the Prisoner’s Dilemma, one of the fundamental problems in game theory)) we’re already making this bet – but we’re pooling the risk onto a set of most or all “children” or “grandchildren.”

What if we were to decide the risk was unacceptable, and apply the Precautionary Principle? Moving to a renewable-focused energy policy would inevitably have certain effects, some of them bad for small groups of people, no doubt – the others pretty good for most of us:

1. Energy would be more expensive in the short run, while capital investment is made;
2. The investment in new infrastructure will stimulate the economy, unemployment will decrease, wages and wealth will increase, GPI, Genuine Progress Indicator, will increase.
3. Energy would become more efficient,  i.e. less energy for the same amount of economic activity. Except for energy producers, transporters and resellers, this is in effect a lowering of overhead costs without general deflation.
4. The unquestioned risks of certain energy uses (air quality, water quality, the risks inherent in extracting, refining, transporting, and storing various energy types) and associated safety and health costs would be reduced.

This assessment gives most of us at least a short-term interest opposed to parties with economic interests in the current system. It also gives us a long term interest in investing in renewables. And it makes the current unsustainable paradigm a bet against future generations.