In 1882, the Edison Electric Light Company made a bet: to use the fossil carbon to generate electricity. At the Holborn Viaduct power station in London, a 93-kilowatt steam generator called “Jumbo” began powering about 1.000 street lamps. The experiment was not an economic success, as gas was cheaper, and the plant closed after only four years. But the precedent had been set.
Today in the world there are over 7.000 nuclear power plants carbon, with a generation capacity of 2.470 gigawatts, 27 million times greater than that of Jumbo. Cumulative CO2 emissions since 1882 amount to 800 billion tons: Fossil coal is the main factor of global warming. Today the planet is 1,2°C warmer than it was then. And the power plants at carbon existing ones continue to churn out 12 billion tons of CO2 per year. How much would it cost us to leave all this behind us, once and for all?
The price to pay for closing the power plants
I have a dream: to turn off all the power plants carbon. Just like that, out of the blue. Then I wake up all sweaty and look at my wallet: how much money do we need? To calculate the costs, it is necessary to consider for each plant the location, the estimated years of residual life, the generation capacity, the typical usage factor in the country and the expected emissions. Then a value must be assigned to each plant, and the emissions that it would produce over its life must be calculated. It provides us with excellent indications a recent post from The Economist, which inspired this.
To reimburse investors for the capital at stake, according to estimates of the consultancy firm Rystad Energy, $5.700 trillion would be needed, equivalent to approximately three years of global investment in clean energy. The longer you wait, the less you have to pay. Clearly, the other side of the coin is that the earlier the shutdown of plants is anticipated, the more cumulative CO2 emissions are avoided.
The Climate Effect of a Coal-Free Farewell
Every cent spent today to close a coal-fired power plant It is 30% more efficient, in terms of avoided warming potential, compared to a cent spent in ten years. Why count for the climate it's not so much the rate of emissions, but their cumulative total. The more CO2 we release into the atmosphere now, the longer it will stay there, warming the planet for centuries.
We calculated emissions in terms of “warming potential”, i.e. years per megatonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2064, using the Bern carbon cycle model.1, which takes into account the rate at which the gas leaves the atmosphere. Bottom line: Shutting down all coal-fired power plants at once is unrealistic, but if we did so the benefits would accumulate for over a century, avoiding the release of huge amounts of CO2.
An economic and political challenge
Raising the $5.700 trillion to liquidate investors would be no small economic feat. As always, I believe the real challenge is political: much of the money would be transferred to Chinese entities, often not very transparent, sometimes for plants not even built yet. Yet, imagination and pragmatism are needed in the face of the scale of the climate crisis. We believe in the power of accurate information as a means of defense, to inspire people to discover and understand the world around them. We believe that scientific knowledge, not blind faith, is the engine of human progress and the key to solving global challenges. Exploring the wonders of science enriches our lives and fuels our imagination. Reflecting on the future and the role of ethics in innovation is essential to building a more equitable and sustainable society.
The greatest energy challenge of our time also offers the greatest opportunity. It is up to us to seize it, with clarity, courage and foresight. The price to pay is high, but the price of inaction is even higher. When do we really start?
- The Bern carbon cycle, also known as the Bern model, is a major climate model developed in the 80s at the University of Bern, Switzerland. It is a simplified model of the global carbon cycle. It is used to study how carbon moves between the atmosphere, oceans, and terrestrial biosphere. It helps predict how atmospheric CO2 levels will change in response to human emissions. For more information, here is a source. ↩︎
