Climate Change Costs in WSJ

Steven Hayward writes in today's Wall Street Journal of the "real cost of tackling climate change." It's not chump change.

He takes a look at the Green lobby's goal of an 80 percent emissions reduction by 2050, what he calls the "80 by 50" target.

According to the Department of Energy's most recent data on greenhouse gas emissions, in 2006 the U.S. emitted 5.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, or just under 20 tons per capita. An 80% reduction in these emissions from 1990 levels means that the U.S. cannot emit more than about one billion metric tons of CO2 in 2050.

Legislation passed here this session sets a 2050 goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels. Hayward puts these out-year goals in perspective.

At the present time, American households emit 1.2 billion tons of CO2 – 20% higher than the entire nation's emissions must be in 2050. If households are to emit no more than their present share of CO2, emissions will have to be reduced to 204 million tons by 2050. But in 2050, there will be another 40 million residential households in the U.S.

Today, the average residence in the U.S. uses about 10,500 kilowatt hours of electricity and emits 11.4 tons of CO2 per year (much more if you are Al Gore or John Edwards and live in a mansion). To stay within the magic number, average household emissions will have to fall to no more than 1.5 tons per year. In our current electricity infrastructure, this would mean using no more than about 2,500 KwH per year. This is not enough juice to run the average hot water heater.

You can forget refrigerators, microwaves, clothes dryers and flat screen TVs.

And so on. No one knows how to get there. Reduced consumption, technological change, alternative fuels, and who knows what provide only implausible rhetorical cover. Hayward again.

The clear implication is that we shall have to replace virtually the entire fossil fuel electricity infrastructure over the next four decades with CO2-free sources – a multitrillion dollar proposition, if it can be done at all.

Natural gas – the preferred coal substitute of the moment – won't come close. If we replaced every single existing coal plant with a natural gas plant, CO2 emissions from electric power generation alone would still be more than twice the 2050 target. Most environmentalists remain opposed to nuclear power, of course. It is unlikely that renewables – wind, solar, and biomass – can ever make up more than about 20% of our electricity supply.

Read the whole thing. And then consider this Chris Mulick story. Nuclear power? Here?

"I think it has to be on the table," Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire said in a recent interview. "I think we're going to have to revisit this question."

Her announced challenger this year, Republican Dino Rossi, agrees: "This isn't something I would say no to. It's something we need to explore."

If it's off the table, are the goals anything more than a rhetorical nod to Washington Greens?