ENERGY IMPLICATIONS OF FUTURE STABILIZATION OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 CONTENT

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(1) calls for ''stabilization of greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system...''. A standard base-line scenario(2,3) that assum es no policy intervention to limit greenhouse-gas emissions has 10TW ( 10 x 10(12) watts) of carbon-emission-free power being produced by the year 2050, equivalent to the power provided by all today's energy sou rces combined. Here we employ a carbon-cycle/energy model to estimate the carbon-emission-free power needed for various atmospheric CO2 stab ilization scenarios. We find that CO2 stabilization with continued eco nomic growth will require innovative, cost-effective and carbon-emissi on-free technologies that can provide additional tens of terawatts of primary power in the coming decades, and certainty by the middle of th e twenty-first century, even with sustained improvement in the economi c productivity of primary energy. At progressively lower atmospheric C O2-stabilization targets in the 750-350 p.p.m.v, range, implementing s tabilization will become even more challenging because of the increasi ng demand for carbon-emission-free power. The magnitude of the implied infrastructure transition suggests the need for massive investments i n innovative energy research.