Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy

Arjun Makhijani is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research www.ieer.org/, an organization dedicated to increasing public involvement in and control over environmental problems through the democratization of science. A specialist on nuclear weapons and nuclear power, waste and testing, and energy conservation, he holds a Ph.D. in engineering (specialization: nuclear fusion) from the University of California at Berkeley.

Mark Selden conducted this Japan Focus interview with Arjun Makhijani (on August 10, 2007. Makhijani explains his program for transforming US energy use, sets the issues in international context, and discusses what it will take to halt global warming.
Why zero carbon emissions? Not even the boldest proposals have called for zero emissions, even defined as you do as a few percentage points of CO2 emissions on either side of zero. We understand the necessity to sharply reduce carbon emissions to safe limits and to reverse the carbon excess in the environment. Still, why zero emissions? Is this simply a means to draw attention to the problem where substantial reductions rather than zero emissions would solve the multiple problems associated with the present profligate fossil fuel and other nonrenewable energy consumption? Does the demand for zero emissions not risk alienating potential support for a feasible program of sharp reductions?

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change requires the burden of reductions to be borne with present and past inequities taken into account. At the very least, this will mean that any CO2 emissions that are allowed would be allocated on a per person basis.

At the same time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that if temperature rise by mid-century is to be limited to less than 2 to 2.4 degrees Celsius, it will be necessary to reduce global CO2 emissions by 50 to 85 percent. The former number (a 50 percent reduction in emissions) corresponds to a 15 percent chance that the temperature rise will be limited to that range; the latter (an 85 percent reduction in emissions) an 85 percent chance. If the remaining CO2 emissions are allocated on a per person basis, and we assume that we will need a reduction of 50 percent in CO2 emissions, the United States will have to reduce its emissions by 88 percent. At this level, it will still be very likely that we will not be able to meet the temperature rise limit. For that we must reduce global emissions by 85 percent. The U.S. goal, given its world-leading position in CO2 emissions, would then have to be 96 percent. This is operationally the same as zero-CO2 emissions. (I assume a global population of 9 billion and a U.S. population of 420 million in the year 2050).

The other reason to actually go to 100 percent elimination is that climate change is shaping up to be more severe than estimated by models. We may have to remove CO2 from the atmosphere that has already been emitted to try to mitigate the severity. It makes no sense to remove CO2 at great expense while emitting more. So I studied the technical feasibility of achieving an energy economy actually eliminating all fossil fuels. Some coal and natural gas infrastructure would be maintained as a contingency, but not used unless there is a major technical failure. Even then coal would only be used with carbon sequestration.

Finally, the solution to other problems, notably oil-related insecurities accompanies a zero-CO2 economy. It is not necessary to have a zero-CO2 economy in the United States to accomplish a reduction of oil-related insecurities. There are a variety of ways to do that, such as turning coal to liquid fuels. But such choices would aggravate CO2 emissions.

You focus on the U.S. Could you locate the U.S. within the global framework of energy consumption, showing the critical dimensions of U.S. reduction of carbon emissions to the overall future of humanity? In particular, could you locate the U.S. problem within the framework of the Asia Pacific region?

I focus on the U.S. because it is the largest emitter of CO2. But obviously it makes no sense for the U.S. to eliminate all its CO2 emissions, while others are doing business as usual and continuing fossil fuel use.

Japan Focus