Stanford University

Environment

FSI scholars approach their research on the environment from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Center on Food Security and the Environment weighs the connection between climate change and agriculture; the impact of biofuel expansion on land and food supply; how to increase crop yields without expanding agricultural lands; and the trends in aquaculture. FSE’s research spans the globe – from the potential of smallholder irrigation to reduce hunger and improve development in sub-Saharan Africa to the devastation of drought on Iowa farms. David Lobell, a senior fellow at FSI and a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has looked at the impacts of increasing wheat and corn crops in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States; and has studied the effects of extreme heat on the world’s staple crops.

PESD releases new working paper on potential for CCS technology to capture greenhouse gases in electricity sector

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Focusing on capture systems for coal-fired power plants until 2030, a sensitivity analysis of key CCS parameters is performed to gain insight into the role that CCS can play in future mitigation scenarios and to explore implications of large-scale CCS deployment.
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Role of Carbon Capture Technologies in Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Models: A Parametric Study for the U.S. Power Sector

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This paper analyzes the potential contribution of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the U.S. electricity sector.  Focusing on capture systems for coal-fired power plants until 2030, a sensitivity analysis of key CCS parameters is performed to gain insight into the role that CCS can play in future mitigation scenarios and to explore implications of large-scale CCS deployment.  By integrating important parameters for CCS technologies into a carbon-abatement model similar to the EPRI Prism analysis (EPRI, 2007), this study concludes that the start time and rate of technology diffusion are important in determining the emissions reduction potential and fuel consumption for CCS technologies. 

Comparisons with legislative emissions targets illustrate that CCS alone is very unlikely to meet reduction targets for the electric-power sector, even under aggressive deployment scenarios.  A portfolio of supply and demand side strategies will be needed to reach emissions objectives, especially in the near term.  Furthermore, the breakdown of capture technologies (i.e., pre-combustion, post-combustion, and oxy-fuel units) and the level of CCS retrofits at pulverized coal plants also have large effects on the extent of greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

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Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, Working Paper #85
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Varun Rai
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Energy Crossroads: Clean Energy for the Developing World

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Mark Thurber, Acting Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development will be moderating a panel, "Clean Energy in the Developing World: Identifying and Implementing Energy Solutions."

This forum will explore the real energy needs of the developing world and the lessons we can learn from past efforts to meet them.  The three panelists bring highly complementary perspectives to bear on this topic: Dr. Alejandro Toledo is the former President of Peru, Dr. Susan Amrose Addy is a social entrepreneur and expert on innovative technologies for the developing world, and Mr. Harry Shimp is a former CEO with extensive experience with energy development in poor countries.  Each of the panelists will give a presentation reflecting on their experiences, followed by a moderated discussion and a question and answer session with members of the audience.  The event is free and open to the public.

The distinguished speakers include:

  • Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru and Visiting Scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
  • Harry Shimp, former CEO, BP Solar
  • Susan Amrose Addy, Ph.D., postdoctoral scholar in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley and guest researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

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Mark C. Thurber

Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall East, Rm E412
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 724-9709 (650) 724-1717
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Mark C. Thurber is Associate Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) at Stanford University, where he studies and teaches about energy and environmental markets and policy. Dr. Thurber has written and edited books and articles on topics including global fossil fuel markets, climate policy, integration of renewable energy into electricity markets, and provision of energy services to low-income populations.

Dr. Thurber co-edited and contributed to Oil and Governance: State-owned Enterprises and the World Energy Supply  (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and The Global Coal Market: Supplying the Major Fuel for Emerging Economies (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is the author of Coal (Polity Press, 2019) about why coal has thus far remained the preeminent fuel for electricity generation around the world despite its negative impacts on local air quality and the global climate.

Dr. Thurber teaches a course on energy markets and policy at Stanford, in which he runs a game-based simulation of electricity, carbon, and renewable energy markets. With Dr. Frank Wolak, he also conducts game-based workshops for policymakers and regulators. These workshops explore timely policy topics including how to ensure resource adequacy in a world with very high shares of renewable energy generation.

Dr. Thurber has previous experience working in high-tech industry. From 2003-2005, he was an engineering manager at a plant in Guadalajara, México that manufactured hard disk drive heads. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.S.E. from Princeton University.

Associate Director for Research at PESD
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Three Challenges in One - The Economy, Energy and the Environment: Engaging China

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PESD Faculty Fellow David Victor spoke at the plenary session "Three Challenges in One -- The Economy, Energy, and the Environment." His talk, "Engaging China", focused on China and the U.S.'s key role in negotiating talks that tackle specific ways to address the current energy challenges.

The talk was part of the World Affairs Council's 63rd Annual International Affairs Conference "Global Priorities: Critical Choices for the Obama Administration".

San Francisco, California

David G. Victor

School of International Relations and Pacific Studies
UC San Diego
San Diego, CA

(858) 534-3254
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Professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and Director of the School’s new Laboratory on International Law and Regulation
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David G. Victor Faculty Fellow Speaker PESD
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Carbon Capture and Storage: An Assessment of Required Technological Growth Rates and Capital Investments

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In this new working paper PESD research affiliate Danny Cullenward studies the required rates of growth and capital investments needed to meet various long-term projections for CCS. Using the PESD Carbon Storage Database as a baseline, this paper creates four empirically-grounded scenarios about the development of the CCS industry to 2020. These possible starting points (the scenarios) are then used to calculate the sustained growth needed to meet CO2 storage estimates reported by the IPCC over the course of this century (out to 2100).

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Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, Working Paper #84
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Frank Wolak, an expert in energy and environmental economics, named director of FSI's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD)

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FSI's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) is pleased to announce the selection of a new director, Frank Wolak, who is Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in the Department of Economics and FSI Senior Fellow.  Professor Wolak brings to the post a distinguished record of scholarship and deep policy experience in energy and environmental economics and regulation.

Wolak’s wide-ranging research contributions have examined energy systems both domestically and in emerging markets around the world.  He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for the electricity supply industry in California and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), among other professional affiliations.

PESD founder David G. Victor, Professor of Law and FSI Senior Fellow, stepped down from the director position effective April 1, 2009. PESD Assistant Director Mark C. Thurber will take over as acting director until Wolak assumes the director position on September 1, 2009.

Victor will remain at Stanford as faculty through the end of the summer of 2009, when he will leave to become a full professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at U.C. San Diego, where he will build a research group working on the study of international regulation.
 
“FSI and Stanford are extremely grateful to David Victor for all that he has done to establish PESD and build it into the innovative and influential research program that it is today,” said FSI Director Coit D. Blacker, the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies. “I know that the entire Stanford community joins me in extending our best wishes to David and in offering a hearty welcome to Frank.”

In a world facing profound transformations in the way energy is generated and used, PESD’s work on how political, economic, and institutional factors combine to shape energy market outcomes meets a critical global research need. For additional information on PESD research interests and platforms, please contact Acting Director Mark Thurber.

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Hubbert's Peak, The Coal Question, and Climate Change

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Abstract
An accurate estimate of the ultimate production of oil, gas, and coal would be helpful for the ongoing policy discussion on alternatives to fossil fuels and climate change. By ultimate production, we mean total production, past and future. It takes a long time to develop energy infrastructure, and this means it matters whether we have burned 20% of our oil, gas, and coal, or 40%. In modeling climate change, the carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the most important factor. The time frame for the climate response is much longer than the time frame for burning fossil fuels, and this means that the total amount burned is more important than the burn rate. Oil, gas, and coal ultimates are traditionally estimated by government geological surveys from measurements of oil and gas reservoirs and coal seams, together with an allowance for future discoveries of oil and gas. We will see that where these estimates can be tested, they tend to be too high, and that more accurate estimates can be made by curve fits to the production history.

Bio
Professor Rutledge is the Tomiyasu Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech, and a former Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science there.  He is the author of the textbook Electronics of Radio, published by Cambridge University Press, and the popular microwave computer-aided-design software package Puff.  He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a winner of the IEEE Microwave Prize, and a winner of the Teaching Award of the Associated Students at Caltech.  He served as the editor for the Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, and is a founder of the Wavestream Corporation, a manufacturer of high-power transmitters for satellite uplinks.

This talk is part of the PESD Energy Working Group series.

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Conference Room

Dave Rutledge Professor of Electrical Engineering Speaker Caltech
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Foreign Affairs hosts David Victor for online Q&A on climate change

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David G. Victor
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Foreign Affairs features David Victor this week for a Q&A on timely issues relating to climate change. Questions from the audience focus on geoengineering, the subject of an article, "The Geoengineering Option", in this month's issue (March/April 2009) authored by Victor and several co-authors.

» Foreign Affairs Q&A with David Victor

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Has the time come for climate engineering?

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David G. Victor
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David Victor and co-authors, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, John Steinbruner, and Katherine Ricke have written a provocative piece, The Geoengineering Option, in Foreign Affairs that is helping to catalyze a debate over the best policy course for this mitigation strategy.

As climate change accelerates, policymakers may have to consider geoengineering as an emergency strategy to cool the planet. Engineering the climate strikes most as a bad idea, but the article argues that the earth's rapidly warming trend necessitates a serious look at geoengineering.

The world's slow progress in cutting carbon emissions and the looming danger that the climate could take a sudden turn for the worse, require policymakers to take a closer look at emergency strategies for curbing the effects of global warming.~ from The Geoengineering Option

Below is a schema of geoengineering options to help mitigate for the earth's warming climate.

 

Additional coverage:

» When Will Geoengineering Tip? in Science Progress
» Geoengineering: Time to Get Serious? in Huffington Post

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