Pickle # 3 - "Waste" Heat

By Wayne Brown

All processes that do "work" ultimately release "waste" heat into the environment. The heat grows with economic activity, namely GDP. Before too long, this effect rivals GHG as a source of "extra" heat, so any assumption of economic growth must eventually deal with this issue. This may actually deserve to be another unwelcome adjustment to the Keya identity, or we can simply assume that we account for *all* forms of heat generated by "carbonized" energy -- over and above GHG "greenhouse" forcing.

Many economic models assume significant GDP growth for the rest of the century. The heat generated by this growth might easily cancel out gains achieved by decarbonization, optimistically around 10%.


All these KWh are released as heat.

The heat generated from solar cells or windmills is not "extra" since it simply re-directs solar heat that would be present in any case. But the heat from burning fossil fuels or nuclear technology is added. 

On the "back of the envelope," 30,000 x 1000 x 1000,000 kWH = 3x10^13 kWH = 300 Terawats. GHG "forcing" is assumed to contribute 1,130 TW. So if we take into account waste heat, burning carbon should be contributing 1,430 TW. To put it another way, the waste heat effect is 25% of GHG "forcing." This is enough to make us reconsider our "math" on impacts.

One sad conclusion is that even if we manage to "decarbonize," nuclear solutions will leave us with waste heat proportional to GDP.  This puts another ceiling on how much real growth is possible on Earth.

Finally, the observed temperature trends we see must include waste heat. I would expect the trends to over-measure this effect since little effort has been made to base IPCC measurements on rural settings. Waste heat would show up, particularly in urban environments.

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