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This is a great thread by @Bankfieldbecky, but I wanted to add a few more pointers. https://twitter.com/Bankfieldbecky/status/1280404159674691585
The idea of "unburnable carbon" or "stranded assets" goes back much further than this thread indicates. I was surprised that there was no link to the work of @bencaldecott at Oxford, who's been on this topic for awhile.
The first mention of the idea of "unburnable carbon" was to Ben's and my knowledge our 1989 book, written for the Dutch Ministry of the Environment. It had a chapter called "How much more fossil fuel can still be burned?".
Krause, Florentin, Wilfred Bach, and Jon Koomey. 1989. From Warming Fate to Warming Limit: Benchmarks to a Global Climate Convention. El Cerrito, CA: International Project for Sustainable Energy Paths. [ http://www.mediafire.com/file/pzwrsyo1j89axzd/Warmingfatetowarminglimitbook.pdf]
This was republished by Wiley in 1992 (easier to find a used hard copy): Krause, Florentin, Wilfred Bach, and Jonathan G. Koomey. 1992. Energy Policy in the Greenhouse. NY, NY: John Wiley and Sons. [ http://amzn.to/1z5CDIl ]
The idea of stranded assets follows from the warming limit framing: Set a warming limit and then work forward toward that goal to estimate the emissions that would keep us under that temperature goal.
This way of thinking works because warming is to first order proportional to cumulative emissions. I talk more on the 2C warming limit history here: https://www.koomey.com/post/99486095923
This same way of thinking was developed independently by @KenCaldeira in his classic 2003 article:
Caldeira, Ken, Atul K. Jain, and Martin I. Hoffert. 2003. "Climate Sensitivity Uncertainty and the Need for Energy Without CO2 Emission " Science. vol. 299, no. 5615. pp. 2052-2054. [ http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/299/5615/2052]
@meinshausen et al. developed the idea further in another classic article in Nature in 2009.
Meinshausen, M, N Meinshausen, @ Hare, S C. B. Raper, K Frieler, R Knutti, D J. Frame, and M R. Allen. 2009. "Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 degrees C." Nature. vol. 458, April 30. pp. 1158-1162. [ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08017.html]
Bill McKibben popularized the idea of stranded assets: McKibben, Bill. 2012. “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” In Rolling Stone Magazine. July 19. pp. [ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719]
So did Al Gore: Gore, Al, and David Blood. 2013. “The Coming Carbon Asset Bubble.” The Wall Street Journal (online). October 29. [ http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304655104579163663464339836?mod=hp_opinion]
The key point, though, is that the idea of stranded assets goes back much earlier than a decade ago. It all follows from the warming limit framing (choose a warming limit, which implies a carbon budget, which implies a limit on how many fossil fuels can still be burned).
The warming limit framing is a direct response to the more traditional benefit-cost analysis framing popular among economists. It encapsulates the argument for urgent action and explains why "wait and see" is a mistake for climate.
For more on that intellectual history, go here: Koomey, Jonathan. 2013. "Moving Beyond Benefit-Cost Analysis of Climate Change." Environmental Research Letters. vol. 8, no. 4. December 2. [ http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/4/041005/]
Here's a tidbit based on my current work. I looked at global proved fossil reserves, from BRG and compared those reserves to the fossil fuels consumed in Grubler et al's reference and Low Energy Demand cases.
BGR. 2020. BGR energy study 2019 – Data and developments concerning German and global energy supplies. Hannover, Germany: Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources. July. [ https://www.bgr.bund.de/EN/Themen/Energie/Downloads/energiestudie_2019_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=6]
Grübler, Arnulf, et al. 2018. "A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies." Nature Energy. vol. 3, no. 6. 2018/06/01. pp. 515-527. [ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0172-6]
Grubler et al. conveniently has no carbon capture in the intervention scenario so we can use emissions to assess fossil fuel consumed in the reference and intervention cases.
Here's the result.
Global proved reserves total about 900 billion tonnes of carbon (not carbon dioxide). The LED reference case implies about 1,300 billion tonnes of carbon (not CO2) emitted from 2020 to 2100.
This graph implies that a small fraction of the remaining resources (which are more than tenfold bigger than reserves) would need to be converted to reserves through exploration or using new technology to meet that demand.
The more important conclusion: To keep global temperatures from increasing no more than 1.5 C from preindustrial times (the green bar), the world can burn less than 1/10 of the fossil carbon implied in the reference case, and only 1/8 of the proved reserves.
That means we’ll either need to keep seven eighths of the fossil reserves in the ground unburned or figure out some way to sequester the carbon from burning it, which will be a heavy lift at the required scale.
Bottom line: We are out of time, and most proved reserves will need to stay in the ground. This is a direct contradiction to every oil and gas company annual report, which assumes continued exploration and increased consumption of fossil fuels.
There's a great research project there for the taking comparing oil and gas company annual reports to what climate stabilization requires.
Also forgot to mention that the IEA used the warming limit framing to give insight in their 2010-2012 world energy outlooks, so were ahead of the curve on this.
IEA. 2010-12. World Energy Outlook 2010-12. Paris, France: International Energy Agency, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). November. [ http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/ ]
One of the key findings of that IEA work: each year of delays adds another $500B to the cost of climate action. This result follows from the warming limit framing combined with IEA modeling.
