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Carbon Dioxide Emissions Defying Expectations

posted by martyb on Wednesday February 12 2020, @06:27PM   
from the did-you-check-to-turn-the-lights-off dept.

quietus writes:

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.

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Original Submission

• Re:Good but not nearly enough (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 13 2020, @05:56AM

  by khallow (3766) on Thursday February 13 2020, @05:56AM (#957614) Journal

  Elections are times of uncertainty, even the ones that appear to be certain. You can't be sure that a politician won't die in a plane crash or drop out due to scandal a day before the election, for example. Thus, markets which are sensitive to the outcome of elections are likely to move to some degree (unless the choices are near identical in expected impact) because uncertainty is removed from the system upon the conclusion of the election.
  
  If a heavy favorite wins as expected, most of the market change due to the new office holder will happen in the months prior to the election and we'd probably not see much of a change at all at election time.
  
  Presently, I could see a large drop in markets, if Trump is somewhat favored to win, and someone far more adverse to businesses, like Sanders gets elected instead. There won't be anything irrational about that drop either. But

  It's been 3 years. Some parts of the economy are doing very poorly due to the trade wars, but the overall economy hasn't crashed yet. We shouldn't be surprised or confused that 1-10 years != 1-3 years.

  You'd be right no matter who is in the office. Recessions happen every few years no matter what. A long stretch without a recession is unusual. In particular, the high end of your duration range, ten years hasn't happened in the past 80 years except for now! That is, we haven't had a decade long period of uninterrupted economic growth in the past 80 years except for the Obama/Trump stretch that we see now. But I think that's more due to the awfulness of Obama's administration towards business and economics slowing growth than any competence on anyone's part. I'd rather have a few bouts of strong, unsibsidized growth punctuated with a couple of minor recessions than what we had.

  Parent