discussion summary

Question Cluster for ”Will We Ever Stop Using Fossil Fuels?”

March 13, 2017

I. Where does the title of the article come from in terms of costs of fossil fuels?

A. What are the benefits to eliminating auto fossil fuel usage in terms of traditional pollution sources?

B. What share of greenhouse gas emissions are due to fossil fuels?

C. What two alternatives does the article give for limiting fossil fuels contribution to carbon?

II. What does the article report in terms of the trends of fossil fuel usage?

A. How does various fossil fuel usage compare to 2005 in the devel- oped world? What policies contribute to this? What has hap- pened in the developing world?

B. Why might an ”activist” policy not be needed? What is the ”de- mand theory” component of this argument?

III. What is the goal of this article in terms of ”supply side” and ”demand side” forces?

A. What conclusions do the authors draw from figure one? What trends does this point to in terms of short run fossil fuel usage?

B. Do the authors believe that fossil fuel supplies will be exhausted in a time frame relevant to global warming?

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C. What do the authors believe are necessary from a technological and policy point of view to achieve demand side reductions?

IV. How has the ”supply side” of fossil fuel usage changed in the last 60 years?

A. How much has shale oil increased known fossil fuel reserves? What was the time frame for that improvement?

B. What can we learn about reserves of fossil fuels from Figure 2?

C. What conclusions do the author’s draw from the Figure about future usage?

D. What is the theoretical relationship between technological progress and the success rate of exploring for new oil and natural gas for- mations?

E. What data does and does not exist on these points? What does it show about the past? What can we say about the future of technological progress in exploration?

F. Are there major sources of fossil fuels that have not been developed yet? What are they? How does this increase known reserves?

V. From the demand side, will low-carbon energy sources undercut the profitability of extracting carbon from fossil fuels?

A. What are the leading rivals for replacing fossil fuel usage in energy generation? How have they faired?

B. Explain the term ”levelized cost of energy”. What does it measure in terms of our model?

C. How does the cost curve for most renewables differ than the one for fossil fuel over time? What time lag is built into these measures for non-fossil fuels?

D. What time period do the authors use for measuring the costs of different types of fuels? Why?

E. From Figure 4, what can we learn about these costs?

1. Why do the authors consider the cost declines from solar en- ergy to be rapid? What caveats do the authors place on this conclusion?

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2. What conclusions do the authors draw about wind power?

3. The authors caveat this with three additional bits of informa- tion. What are they? How do they affect the measured MC of fossil fuels? What is the ”Duck Curve”?

F. How do the authors see fossil fuel replace proceeding for automo- biles?

1. What cost issue(s) exist with electric vehicles which keep them from being competitive?

2. What other issues exist with electric vehicles along these lines?

3. How do electric vehicles currently fair in terms of carbon re- duction? Compared to what?

4. How do the authors compare the costs of using electric and non-electric vehicles? Can you reproduce their calculations? What conclusion due they draw about competitiveness of the technologies?

5. How do the authors expect the two above numbers to change over time? Where do these estimates come from?

6. How does Figure (6) lead the authors to draw conclusions about competitiveness of these vehicles over the next two decades?

7. What happens to the above numbers if we add the social cost of capital”? What is meant by that?

G. What can we learn from this about the future of carbon impacts?

1. How much fossil fuel usage do the authors expect by 2040 without a major policy intervention?

2. How should this effect temperature and welfare? Where do these estimates come from?

3. What market failures do the authors believe these numbers show? What is a market failure?

4. What policy do they recommend based on this?

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