Carbon Dioxide, Climate Change and Electricity

by Brent Bischoff, CEO/GM Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative, Inc.

Oregon, Washington and California have all made laws that set carbon reduction targets, including mandates for zero-carbon economies by a given year. What does zero carbon mean, and why is it so important that our governments make these laws?

Much of the energy that fuels our modern lifestyle is extracted from the Earth and refined into many varieties of carbon chain molecules: coal, gasoline, natural gas, diesel, propane, jet fuel, etc. When we burn these fuels, we capture most of the energy to produce heat and accomplish work. We cannot see, smell or taste the combustion leftovers—water vapor and carbon dioxide gas. Out of sight, out of mind has been how society treated CO2 emissions over the many decades we’ve been burning fossil fuels. That is, until we noticed global warming.

We can measure climate change. For example, the summer of 2023 was the Earth’s hottest on record. We can measure CO2 in the atmosphere. In 1960, CO2 was about 315 parts per million, and in 2023 it had risen to about 420 ppm in the atmosphere. However, CO2 represents only 0.04% of the gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. Even though on a parts-per-million basis CO2 increased significantly over several decades of burning fossil fuels, it still makes up only a tiny fraction of the Earth’s atmosphere. So, what does this increase in CO2 have to do with global warming?

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. In the Earth’s atmosphere, greenhouse gases have the effect of trapping heat within the atmosphere like a greenhouse traps the sun’s heat. CO2 is only one of several greenhouse gases. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, and so is methane. Also, every greenhouse gas has a different global warming potential, with CO2 being low on the GWP list. You can see there are many factors that influence the greenhouse gas effect in the atmosphere.

And the greenhouse gas effect is just one factor influencing climate change.

We can say with reasonable certainty that man burning fossil fuels caused an increase in atmospheric CO2. We can say with reasonable certainty that there is global warming. However, we cannot say with certainty that the human-caused increase in atmospheric CO2 causes global warming. Many complex factors influence climate change. Given these complexities, people are left to develop their own opinions about CO2’s role in global warming. But enough people believe CO2 is a major cause of global warming to enact carbon-reduction laws and mandates to get to zero carbon.

Whether right or wrong, the drive to zero carbon affects your electric bill and the reliability of the electric grid. Stay tuned next month to learn how.