More than you ever wanted to know on CO2 emissions

Want to know how much CO2 is emitted by the power plant across town, and how it compares to the one in the city you are planning to move? The Center for Global Development has just launched a web site that will tell you exactly that.  In fact, the site has emissions data for every single power plant in the world--some 50,000+ power plants and 20,000+ power-producing companies. 

Called the CARMA (CARbon Monitoring for Action) website and database, the site focuses on the global power sector, the largest carbon emitter industry.  It has reported or estimated data on current emissions, emissions in 2000, and future emissions based on published capacity expansion plans. It is a downloadable database, with tools for ranking and comparing power facilities, power companies, and geographic areas.

For those plants that have not reported their emissions publicly, CARMA provides "estimates based on the latest plant-level technical information, a statistical model fitted to data for thousands of publicly-reporting facilities, and adjustments for national differences in capacity utilization." 

This is an amazing treasure trove of data. It will set into motion an interesting experiment on what transparency can achieve with respect to public activism and corporate responses. 

Comments

[Adrian]

It sure looks like an interesting site. I find the intensity figures most rewarding. For instance, the United States has an intensity of 1,404 pounds of CO2 emitted per megawatt-hour of electricity produced while France's equivalent is 162 and Europe's average is 907. Comparing countries and companies is quite interesting and could spark public activism. But we should look towards a global political regime to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

So Dani, some of the interesting questions (and I have been hoping for a post on this issue for some time) are:
- What are the best political regimes to substantially cut greenhouse gas emissions: cap-and-trade, carbon tax, voluntary markets or something else?
- Should industrial countries go ahead since they are to blame for man-made global warming for the past 100+ years?
- Should developing countries begin stabilizing or even cut emissions since they will be important emitters in the coming decades, and how should this come about and what is the impact on their competitiveness and industrialization endeavors?

[Andrzej]

Dani!

Thanks for the info on this amazing but depressing website. I did not realize that Poland - the country where I was born - is such a big CO2 emitter. Now I also can see why it is so easy for Quebec to be such a lion of progress on the CO2 emissions front in Canada. With most of their power being CO2 free anybody could be a leader.

I wonder though if the calculations there take into account CO2 emissions caused by uranium mining and transportation in case of nuclear plants. And by the same token, CO2 emissions produced during coal, oil and gas mining and transportation in case of fossil fuel plants.

[Winston]

There should be a feature to rank countries/cities/regions in each of the categories. That would make for some interesting debates.

[Dominic]

Andrzej,

I suspect the data isn't life-cycle emission data, but simple point of production emissions.

The give away is that solar energy is listed as having zero emissions. But over the life-cycle of producing solar energy, building the solar plant would obviously include material production and chemical processes which are energy consuming and emission intensive.

[Winston]

"There should be a feature to rank countries/cities/regions in each of the categories. That would make for some interesting debates."

Never mind. The feature's already there.

[Peter Schaeffer]

A few notes that may help folks understand global CO2 emissions’.

1. China is now the leader in CO2 output. According to the Netherland Environmental Assessment agency, China passed the US in CO2 output in 2006. Given that China’s growth rate is vastly higher than the US, China’s CO2 output will dwarf the US (and every other country) by 2015.

2. While it is certainly true that the major (traditional) industrial countries have been emitting CO2 for a long time, this turns out not to be significant. Pre-WWII emissions were actually quite low. 82% of all CO2 output has been since 1950.

3. The US is not a particularly high CO2 output nation. US CO2 output (2004) per PPP dollar (IMF WEO statistics) is 0.144 kilos. The world average is 0.139. kilos. The US is only 3.7% above the global mean.