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2016 was the third year in a row that global carbon emissions remained stable, even as the overall economy grew. Although 32.1 Gigatonnes of emissions is certainly not good news for future climates, there is some cause for optimism within the numbers, as some major economies saw their emissions drop. And controlling emissions didn't come at the expense of the world's finances, as preliminary estimates show that the global economy grew by over three percent.
[...] China was one of those countries, starting up five new reactors to increase its nuclear capacity by 25 percent. Nuclear combined with renewables to handle two-thirds of the country's rising demand. China also shifted some of its fossil fuel use from coal to natural gas. The net result was a drop in emissions of about one percent, even as demand grew by over five percent (and the economy grew by nearly seven percent). Gas still represents a small fraction of China's energy economy, so there's the potential for further displacement of coal.
In the US, the process of shifting from coal to natural gas is already well advanced. Coal use was down by 11 percent last year, the IEA estimates, allowing natural gas to displace it as the US' largest single source of energy. This, along with booming renewables, allowed the US to drop its carbon emissions by three percent in 2016. That takes emissions to levels not seen since 1992, even though the economy is now 80 percent larger than it was then.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/global-carbon-emissions-continue-to-stabilize-us-has-3-drop/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:06PM (2 children)
Something that makes the environmental folks very angry is pointing out that if, supposedly, solar drops in price by X every Y making it now cheaper than coal and soon to be a tenth the cost of anything, and if, supposedly, electricity as currently used is useless unless 24x7, then the logical result is an enormous explosion in resource utilization and capitalism and jobs (none of which their political group wants) because entire new industries will spring up around "energy is intermittent but when its there, its free".
Why would environmentalists be angry about a burgeoning, green-energy-storage market? Oh wait, they wouldn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:30PM
Did you know if you printed out every page of Wikipedia, and stacked them one on top of the other, the environmentalists would go nuts?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @04:17AM
Why would environmentalists be angry about a burgeoning, green-energy-storage market?
Because environmentalists are stupid. If you were as smart as VirginLoserMan you would know that already.