Climate Risk and the Fossil Fuel Industry: Two Feet High and Rising

As climate change effects grow more pronounced, there can be little doubt that an industry that produces 68 percent of human greenhouse gas emissions will find itself under increasing pressure. The risks to the industry correlate with progress on climate goals. Unless a technological breakthrough can restrict carbon releases, the fortunes of the fossil fuel industry and the stability of Earth's climate will be locked in a zero-sum game. Climate's gain is the industry's loss and vice versa. For coal, the threats posed by climate action are already being felt. Coal's fortunes now rest with developing countries, where decisions to seek China-style, coal-led development will increasingly be met by international pressure to choose an alternate path

An expensive diversion

In the midst of a shortage of natural gas, Abu Dhabi has launched an investment into renewable energy. Why? Will renewables allow the Persian Gulf sheikhdom to meet rising electricity demand without simultaneous increases in conventional power? No. Even in one of the worldﾒs sunniest places ﾖ but not one of its windiest ﾖ conventional solar generation is unable to handle a demand peak that extends past sundown. Renewables offer an intermittent electricity supply at a much higher average cost than the existing gasfired system. Abu Dhabi will be neither able to forgo construction of a single conventional generating plant, nor reduce its reliance on gas imports from Qatar. The contribution to energy security will be negligible. This paper finds two main benefits, among several limitations. First, renewables may allow reduced fuel consumption in conventional power plants, which will cut carbon emissions and burning of expensive backup fuels. Second, the highly publicized investment has improved the regimeﾒs international image, bringing acclaim as a leader in clean energy, despite its status as a key OPEC oil producer. In the political context of a rentier monarchy, such prestige is as an important source of domestic legitimacy

Stability versus sustainability: energy policy in the Gulf monarchies

Rising consumption of oil and natural gas inside the six Gulf Arab monarchies threatens to displace hydrocarbon exports that have long provided a large source of GDP. This trend is, in large part, a result of subsidized energy pricing and distribution, practices which form an integral part of rentier structures of political control. However, these practices are insufficiently analyzed in the rentier literature. This dissertation addresses this shortfall by incorporating the theoretical significance of energy as a physical commodity – rather than as a source of rent – into the rentier literature. Energy subsidization has fostered within these states a structural dependence that has driven choices in industrialization, city design, technology preference and use, and personal habits. These subsidies have also helped build and maintain public support for unelected regimes, alongside the well-known role of energy rents. Energy thus has a conflicting dual role in the rentier state that contributes to the difficulty of subsidy reform. Externally, energy exports are the main source of state revenue; but domestically, energy is an important source of political support. The literature’s portrayal of subsidies as unreformable citizen entitlements conflicts with the increasing economic imperative of reforming these distribution practices. Since rentier consumption patterns threaten the flow of rents, the self-defeating nature of domestic resource distribution is emerging as a long-term weakness within rentier theory. I present evidence that reforms have already taken place, despite theoretical predictions to the contrary, and demonstrate the economic imperatives that make further reforms likely in at least two of the six states: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. I also show that citizen understanding of energy subsidies is more nuanced than the entitlement portrayals found in the literature. This dissertation suggests revising the theory to accept a more flexible interpretation of subsidies as customary privileges, which allows for reform of these practices. Reforms in rentier monarchies’ energy policies are important not just because they challenge the most important theories of governance of these states, but because examining these reforms allows for understanding the difficult tradeoffs between politics and economics that underlie the survival of these peculiar regimes

Reflection and tunneling of ocean waves observed at a submarine canyon

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 32 (2005): L10602, doi:10.1029/2005GL022834.Ocean surface gravity waves with periods between 20 and 200 s were observed to reflect from a steep-walled submarine canyon. Observations of pressure and velocity on each side of the canyon were decomposed into incident waves arriving from distant sources, waves reflected by the canyon, and waves transmitted across the canyon. The observed reflection is consistent with longwave theory, and distinguishes between cases of normal and oblique angles of incidence. As much as 60% of the energy of waves approaching the canyon normal to its axis was reflected, except for waves twice as long as the canyon width, which were transmitted across with no reflection. Although waves approaching the canyon at oblique angles cannot propagate over the canyon, total reflection was observed only at frequencies higher than 20 mHz, with lower frequency energy partially transmitted across, analogous to the quantum tunneling of a free particle through a classically impenetrable barrier.Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation

Qatar ‘rises above’ its region: Geopolitics and the rejection of the GCC gas market

A curious imbalance afflicts energy markets in the Persian Gulf region. Five of the six Gulf monarchies exhibit shortages in domestic supply of natural gas, with two of them turning to market-priced imports of liquefied natural gas, mostly from outside the region. Meanwhile, the sixth Gulf monarchy, Qatar, holds the world’s third-largest conventional reserves and is the planet’s number two gas exporter. Why is Qatar, given its enormous resources and relatively small domestic needs, unwilling to supply gas sufficient to meet its neighbours’ demand? After all, Qatar, like its neighbours on the Arabian Peninsula, is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a monarchical bloc that links these six Sunni Muslim-led regimes through trade, customs and immigration treaties, even marriage ties. A currency union among the six is also planned. Surely it makes more economic sense for the five gas-short monarchies to import via pipeline from such a well-endowed regional ally, rather than enter the competitive global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market with its implications for higher prices on fuel and higher costs of transport? The answers to these questions – the theme that drives our research – flow from two broad categories: pricing and politics. Briefly, gas-short GCC states have historically been unwilling to pay what Qatar considered a reasonable price for its gas. In part because of this recalcitrance, Qatar has “risen above” the GCC market. It sought instead to export its gas as LNG to far-flung customers where it secured much higher prices on long-term bilateral contracts. Success in LNG has allowed Qatar to build an extraordinary level of global influence and improve its national security. It has done this by compiling links to powerful importing states that have become stakeholders in the security of continued Qatari supply. Qatar’s gains in revenue, political influence and security have reduced its dependence on regional markets. In the short to medium-term, Qatari supply appears unlikely to assuage unmet demand in neighbouring monarchies

Reforming end-user energy prices could rationalize GCC energy demand

The six GCC economies – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain – are some of the world’s most profligate consumers of energy and emitters of greenhouse gases, relative to their size. Other hydrocarbon exporters in the region, notably Iran and Algeria, are beset by similar circumstances. Observers have attributed this state of affairs to the very low prices at which energy is sold in these countries. However, there have been few attempts to quantify the effects of subsidies on domestic consumption. This article takes a simplified approach to a complex topic by posing the following questions: What would happen if fuel and electricity prices in the Gulf monarchies were increased to world market levels? How would consumers respond? More specifically, would electricity demand in Abu Dhabi adjust to look more like that in unsubsidized, but otherwise similar, Arizona