SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the did-you-check-to-turn-the-lights-off dept.
Germany's economy nowadays emits as much carbon dioxide as it did in the 1950s, when it was 10 times smaller.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), carbon dioxide emissions trends for 2019 suggest clean energy transitions are underway. Global power sector emissions declined by some 170 Mt, or 1.2%, with the biggest falls taking place in the advanced economies of the European Union, Japan and the United States. There, CO2 emissions are now at levels not seen since the late 1980s, when electricity demand was one-third lower.
In these advanced economies, the average CO2 emissions intensity of electricity generation declined by nearly 6.5% in 2019. This is a rate three times faster than the average over the past decade.
This decline is driven by a switch from coal to natural gas, a rise in nuclear power and weaker electricity demand, combined with the seemingly unstoppable growth in renewables. These now constitute over 40% of the energy mix in Germany (wind power +11%) and the United Kingdom, where rapid expansion in offshore wind power generation is happening.
The bummer lies with the rest of the world.
There emissions continue to expand with close to 400 Mt last year. About 80% of that increase is happening in Asia. Coal demand here continues to expand, accounting for over 50% of energy use.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by choose another one on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:33PM (8 children)
Well if Germany going back to 1950s isn't good enough, try UK which has gone back to 1880s levels and is on target for 1850s levels by 2030.
Of course the US isn't doing sh*t to help, but then it never really does until someone makes a big bang in its back yard, nothing new there, Europe is used to it...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @11:19PM
Every country should do something to bring their emissions down as far as practical, but the US and a few large nations have a disproportionately large portion of the responsibility here both in absolute and relative terms.
For some nations though, that might mean a net increase in emissions as they get their economies functioning at the level needed to lift people out of poverty. In most cases though, they should be able to skip the worst emissions as they'll be able to benefit from higher efficiency equipment that wasn't available when the US was building at its greatest rates.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 13 2020, @01:03AM (6 children)
The UK has gone back to 1880s levels how? Are they outsourcing all manufacturing and then not counting that, nor the shipping costs?
Just the trucks and cars and paving projects in todays' U.K. should exceed 1880s levels, if you count the cost of making and disposing of the trucks and cars.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday February 13 2020, @02:41PM (1 child)
Have you seen our government?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 13 2020, @03:06PM
Fair enough, but I thought Brexit was engineered by the same shadow group that put Trump in... they seem a little too business friendly to stop or even slow the expenditure of energy, nor expend un-necessary cash in the generation of that energy. Why work today when you can put off the costs until tomorrow?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday February 13 2020, @09:17PM (3 children)
> The UK has gone back to 1880s levels how?
Short answer: Coal.
Longer: Less coal, mostly. A lot lot less coal.
We used to dig and burn a shit ton of the stuff, back in the 1880s for (a) heating houses and (b) transport - trains, steam, lots and lots of, in the 1970s we still used it for power generation (to run the electric trains and electric heating). Look at the carbon emissions charts by sector - buildings, transport and power generation are big ones.
Thatcher started the de-coaling, and the getting rid of much of the heavy industry too - result is CO2 emissions falling from the 1970s onwards.
I don't think any country's carbon figures include international aviation or shipping or offshoring of manufacture (or of waste disposal for that matter) - I agree it should be accounted for somewhere but there doesn't seem to be any agreement on how to do it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 13 2020, @10:15PM (2 children)
That could do it, but I still have a hard time believing that a population half the size - without proper home heating (well, maybe that was a factor, too...) and extremely limited access to transport would create more CO2... I guess twice as much per capita isn't too hard to believe, if they burned coal in stoves to keep drafty houses warm.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday February 14 2020, @02:38PM (1 child)
To give you an idea, my 3-bed terraced house was built 1850s, would've had 8 fireplaces (or similar - one has a cooking range in it) originally (most bricked up now). The old coal cellar is approx 3 x 6 x 10? ft, goes out underground to the street and has a hatch so coal could be delivered direct from the street. Drafty? - it would have been, would've had large single-glazed sash windows, still has solid stone walls and (ground) floor. Every house on the street from that era is the pretty much the same same.
When we cleaned up domestic heating, partly to combat urban smog, we really just moved the coal burning to the power stations, in huge quantities - large earth-moving (well, coal-moving) vehicles look tiny on a power station coal pile. All that is gone now, last 40yrs or so.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 14 2020, @04:46PM
I live in a port town, and we had a coal burning electric plant about 1km inland from the port, they built a conveyor belt from the port to the plant including a highway overpass... That plant is decommissioned now, thankfully. Too bad its nuclear replacement is stalled in construction - that would close a great many more fossil fuel plants.
🌻🌻 [google.com]