Humanity has never displaced an existing energy source with a new one. Instead total energy usage grows. Our only success with fossil fuel usage reduction is that coal usage is no longer growing.
Growing wind, solar, and nuclear by 10x from the 2019 levels reported in that data set would put them (as a combination) on par with one of the three big existing fossil fuel sources. But this can only decrease fossil fuel usage if increased energy usage does not take up all those gains as it has always done in the past.
I do think though that reducing fossil fuel usage could be possible now only because of the shifting demographics of the world (most of the world is starting a population decline). The counter argument is that a large portion of the world will continue to grow economically (increases energy usage) and become wealthy enough to start air conditioning and otherwise dramatically increase energy usage.
Well Germany is closing down their nuclear power plants, under excuses of damage and recent Chernobyl series.
While actively funding Nord Stream 2.
So there goes your green EU.
If we are to survive climate change we would have to cull all politicians and dirty industry leaders. They have so much power over the world and don;t give a fuck about next generation.
After all they all will be able to afford ticket to Elysium.
This is a primary reason that we need a carbon tax. Building out renewables and stopping there will just make energy cheaper and induce demand. A carbon tax will actually change the energy mix by making carbon-intensive energy sources more expensive relative to less carbon-intensive sources.
Speaking of visual reality checks, check out En-ROADS, which was built in collaboration with MIT to simulate different policy interventions. Check out the carbon price slider compared to everything else: https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7....
My favorite thing to do with the money from a carbon tax is to just give it back to everyone as equal dividends, to offset any regressive effects of the carbon tax without creating tons of loopholes with another more complex disbursement scheme. This is called carbon fee and dividend.
Counterpoint, while it’s true we still use things like coal, what we do with them has changed massively. Coal in the 1850s was all about metal working, steam production (train and ship), and home heating, uses that have been almost entirely replaced. Coal fired power plants came surprisingly later, with most units coming online in America between 1910 and 1950, a time in which trains and ships largely went electric or to diesel.
Also, our history of energy production is very short. I’d be disinclined to say that it’s impossible based on a mere 200 year sample.
>> Humanity has never displaced an existing energy source with a new one. Instead total energy usage grows.
Which is why any efforts based on reducing energy use are doomed to fail. "Do more with less" sounds great but goes against human nature to expand and collect resources. The push should always be to make energy cheaper or more green, not to curtail energy use. An effort to power air conditioners using solar: good, people will get behind that. More efficient air conditioners that use less power: great. Telling people they must reduce air conditioning and just live in hot: bad, doomed to fail. So bring on the solar panels. The mob will support you. Just don't tell that mob they must do with less.
Interesting. Looking at the same graph - especially when you tweak it to show only the last decade - you'll see solar is growing very quickly (25% YoY) while the others stay fairly stable. That would have it overtaking oil in 20 years.
Considering we're going to see mass adoption of electric vehicles in the next 5-20 years I think that will happen even more quickly.
I'm not sure if this is a "reality check", and it sounds suspiciously similar to the "population explosion" claims.
US electricity and gasoline consumption has declined since 2010, despite a growing GDP and almost 20 million more people. Efficiency and conservation have achieved enormous gains, and every renewable source that comes online displaces an existing one.
This has occurred across every developed nation. Japan is using 20% less energy today than it did in 2000. Germany, France, Italy, Canada -- all below 2000.
As developing countries bring more of their population into more modern accouterments, of course the total is increasing -- for now -- but thankfully most are starting with a much greater mix of reasonable sources.
Displacing fossil fuel for mobility with green hydrogen + electricity will reduce a large portion of those energy sources.
Hydrogen for heating + for shipping + heavy duty transit -- more.
California has already decoupled increasing amounts of electricity use and emissions through a combination of policies to increase adoption of renewables and through codes and standards for home heating/insulation/good build practices.
So while your statement may resonate with some of the past - it does not handcuff us to a future trajectory. It is possible to change and it is happening - it just needs to happen faster and increase in its scale.
Also - we did stop using whale oil in the early 1900s so your statement is not 100%.
> Humanity has never displaced an existing energy source with a new one. Instead total energy usage grows. Our only success with fossil fuel usage reduction is that coal usage is no longer growing.
That is a misrepresentation. The fact that a bunch of other people in another country use, say, more biomass now than in the past since there are more of them than in the past, does not mean that in your country there hasn't been a displacement of biomass with, say, coal. And indeed, coal had displaced biomass in many countries in the world. And natural gas displaced coal in some places.
Of course they can't. Nuclear is about the only viable way currently, but "greenies" won't have that. I think eventually they'll have to accept it as well the climate skeptics. I certainly hope solar comes up from the rear and surprises me, but unless we have a 100x breakthrough in energy storage (batteries or something more exotic) I don't see it happening. I guess a break through in solar->biofuel energy conversion might also be sufficient for it to replace fossil fuels completely.
Exactly. Tragically, people think individual action doesn't achieve anything, but they measure the wrong thing, that one person's impact on one or two actions. Our greatest impact is in leading others, which multiplies. To lead others we must first lead ourselves. My personal actions have led me to consult corporate executives, mayors, congressmembers, and other influential people.
From the article:
> not yet investing at sufficient scale in technologies that support fast decarbonisation of their economies
The most effective "technology" is to consume less. What will do that is acting on different values, instead of growth, enjoying what we have, instead of efficiency, resilience, instead of comfort and convenience, meaning, purpose, and the satisfaction of a job well done. Human societies lived with those values for hundreds of thousands of years in some cases, and centuries in many others, with higher markers of health, longevity, stability, and equality than our culture until very recently, but those markers are going back down. And will drop precipitously if we don't return to those values.
Population growth may be leveling off in the most polluting nations, but it's globally growing and over sustainable levels. Economically we can sustain population decreasing and many nations have lowered birth rates with the opposite of the One Child Policy coercion or eugenics, purely voluntary, noncoercive, leading to stability, health, and abundance.
> “Every day, we witness the worsening consequences of the climate crisis for communities around the world – farmers’ crops failing; floods and fires engulfing towns and villages; families facing an uncertain future."
We can dance around sustainability issues all we want, we eventually reach both overpopulation and overconsumption, both driven by growth, both driven by cultural beliefs and values we can change. This community loves nuclear, but without considering your point, that we aren't using new energies to replace but to augment. If we ever expect to stop growing and instead shrinking our polluting behavior, the sooner the better, as in now, which requires leadership more like Churchill, Mandela, MLK, and peers, not new technology. It costs nothing and improves our lives. When we learn to reduce consumption, nuclear will help. With our current values, we'll keep growing until hitting its limits, back where we are now, but with more people and dependency, making reduction harder.
Nixon wanted to have 1000 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. by the year 2000. Today there are 60. Would this law have still applied if we followed up with our planned nuclear infrastructure?
This article is a little misleading when it includes aviation industry bailouts as "fossil fuel commitments". Not only this is an indirect connection, but also there is no green air travel (for now). Regardless of your opinion on the necessity of the bailouts, the thought behind them was not to further tip the scales towards fossil fuel, but to help out the aviation industry in their country.
> "Germany went the renewable path and their annual energy sector emissions are about 300 million tons of CO2."
Not really. They held on hard to gas and coal power. Of the latter, a disturbing amount is still based on lignite or brown coal, which is more accurately described as "somewhat combustible dirt".
Germany is not nearly as dedicated to green energy as they would like the world to think. They shut down their nuclear sector due to fear, and primarily replaced it with more fossil energy.
I do agree that nuclear power is something we should be more positive towards, but that does not invalidate renewable energy sources.
> If you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively, you must support nuclear power.
Very strong statement but no evidence whatsoever.
Germany's a bad example, we're (that is: the government during the last 16 years) doing a lot to keep really old crappy coal power plants running and slow the transformation towards renewables. And still, 50% of the electricity is produced by renewables.
As a Canadian, even I am surprised by how shallow the rhetoric of our PM is in terms of "building back better" and green future. He basically helicoptered an insane amount of money on the population for rampant consumerism and bailed out companies indiscriminately whereas built basically no transit, no green infrastructure whatsoever.
> He basically helicoptered an insane amount of money on the population for rampant consumerism.
I take no issue with this. Keynes is right you need to prop back up aggregate demand, and keep people fed.
> bailed out companies indiscriminately whereas built basically no transit, no green infrastructure whatsoever.
That's the bad part. The demand-side stimulus should be indiscriminate because the supply-side policy should be extremely targeted. People buy whatever the good deal is, like an electric field pulls hardest on the stuff with the most charge. Its essential to to puppeteer the supply side so the environmentally good things are the good deals.
Our PM also walks behind the US and reiterates whatever climate target they state, like X % by 2030 and y % by 2050. I have seen exactly 0 plan on how to get there. I suspect he'll retire in 2029.
You don't say ey, the situation is approximately exactly the same here in Australia. In fact, 'gas lead recovery' is the closest we have a to 'building back better'.
From my limited knowledge in the field, "traditional" nuclear power plants are usually very likely to incur in cost overruns (a recent example being [0]), supplemental to an already significant expense and a very long term investment that most politicians do not seem to be very fond of. In the past few decades modular, entirely self-contained and passively safe designs have been often in discussion as more and more systems are devised, but I don't feel much interest towards a mass adoption to at the very least represent a fraction of the current worldwide power generation (above the tiny percentage nuclear sits on at the moment). Is it merely a matter of economics and ineffectivenes of the price/lifetime power generation, compared to more traditional systems? It's not as if other nuclear concepts cannot also take advantage of a good portion of spent fuel—that so far has been of significant concern and only one project seems will be successful at in the short-future [1]—such as traveling wave reactors, or breeder designs in general (I do understand most of the research and real-life applications have been less than effective). Due to continuous power generation couldn't such systems also reduce the need for the much dreaded fossil backup, assuming sufficient capacities?
The article is a summary of an analysis and I can’t find the analysis linked in it. I don’t know why or how journalists find this an acceptable practice.
If there was a lesson from covid, it's that governments need to step in where markets fail--markets aren't interested in maintaining a strategic n95 mask (or oil) stockpile. Government subsidies on fossil fuels, like subsidies on food production, should be seen as "buying" stability and resiliency. This doesn't mean green energy shouldn't be subsidized at more dollars per watt (or mile) than oil, just that oil subsidies still have a role.
Here we go again. If we do not fix the demand side of the problem, the supply will be there for us, regardless of how much we try to penalize the western oil companies.
To fix the demand side we need technological advances and help from regulation. BUT. Regulation itself cannot solve the problem. That is the elephant in the room. Regulations come and go, and they are bound by borders, but once a technology has been discovered there is no going back.
Tesla's 250 mile car and charging network in 2010 was the reason that gasoline will die in the US, not the 7k tax incentive on a 60k car.
This short 30 second video on YouTube shows how average temperature increased globally since 1880. The irony to me is that every nation is witnessing negative impacts of global warming and climate change and yet we chose to do so little.
Well you'll never satisfy climate apocalypse watchers. We've made real progress if you look at amounts of money and resources spent, but it will never be fast enough for them.
Well, the current US president shut down oil and gas drilling leases from US public lands. There was a lot of fanfare around this.
2020 was the first year the US exported more petroleum than it imported on an annual basis. But due to the sudden federal approved decline in 2021, US will now import more oil in 2022.
Is there a chart to see how much they committed to both fossil fuel and green energy over time? These two numbers by itself don’t really tell me anything.
But if let’s say fossil fuel commitment has gone down, while green energy goes up, then that’s a different, more positive story.
Honestly I consider that properly pricing externalities might be the #1 priority we need to change right now. Nevermind all the castastrophes and loss of freedom brought by capitalism. Without charging private interests the true costs of their activity, allowing them to pocket the profits and spread the losses, markets are not even in theory optimising for utility / social good.
A Georgist approach to this would probably alleviate many of the most pressing problems of global neoliberal capitalism.
True, other large non-G7 nations like Australia and Saudi Arabia that also have very high consumption-driven emissions per capita should also be called out.
[+] [-] gregwebs|4 years ago|reply
Humanity has never displaced an existing energy source with a new one. Instead total energy usage grows. Our only success with fossil fuel usage reduction is that coal usage is no longer growing.
Growing wind, solar, and nuclear by 10x from the 2019 levels reported in that data set would put them (as a combination) on par with one of the three big existing fossil fuel sources. But this can only decrease fossil fuel usage if increased energy usage does not take up all those gains as it has always done in the past.
I do think though that reducing fossil fuel usage could be possible now only because of the shifting demographics of the world (most of the world is starting a population decline). The counter argument is that a large portion of the world will continue to grow economically (increases energy usage) and become wealthy enough to start air conditioning and otherwise dramatically increase energy usage.
[+] [-] me_me_me|4 years ago|reply
While actively funding Nord Stream 2.
So there goes your green EU.
If we are to survive climate change we would have to cull all politicians and dirty industry leaders. They have so much power over the world and don;t give a fuck about next generation.
After all they all will be able to afford ticket to Elysium.
[+] [-] EcoMonkey|4 years ago|reply
Speaking of visual reality checks, check out En-ROADS, which was built in collaboration with MIT to simulate different policy interventions. Check out the carbon price slider compared to everything else: https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7....
My favorite thing to do with the money from a carbon tax is to just give it back to everyone as equal dividends, to offset any regressive effects of the carbon tax without creating tons of loopholes with another more complex disbursement scheme. This is called carbon fee and dividend.
The IPCC finds with high confidence that we need a high price on carbon to stay under 1.5C. PDF warning: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15...
A policy framework without a carbon tax is not serious about getting emissions down.
[+] [-] ashtonkem|4 years ago|reply
Also, our history of energy production is very short. I’d be disinclined to say that it’s impossible based on a mere 200 year sample.
[+] [-] sandworm101|4 years ago|reply
Which is why any efforts based on reducing energy use are doomed to fail. "Do more with less" sounds great but goes against human nature to expand and collect resources. The push should always be to make energy cheaper or more green, not to curtail energy use. An effort to power air conditioners using solar: good, people will get behind that. More efficient air conditioners that use less power: great. Telling people they must reduce air conditioning and just live in hot: bad, doomed to fail. So bring on the solar panels. The mob will support you. Just don't tell that mob they must do with less.
[+] [-] tjbiddle|4 years ago|reply
Considering we're going to see mass adoption of electric vehicles in the next 5-20 years I think that will happen even more quickly.
[+] [-] defaultname|4 years ago|reply
US electricity and gasoline consumption has declined since 2010, despite a growing GDP and almost 20 million more people. Efficiency and conservation have achieved enormous gains, and every renewable source that comes online displaces an existing one.
This has occurred across every developed nation. Japan is using 20% less energy today than it did in 2000. Germany, France, Italy, Canada -- all below 2000.
As developing countries bring more of their population into more modern accouterments, of course the total is increasing -- for now -- but thankfully most are starting with a much greater mix of reasonable sources.
[+] [-] boringg|4 years ago|reply
Hydrogen for heating + for shipping + heavy duty transit -- more.
California has already decoupled increasing amounts of electricity use and emissions through a combination of policies to increase adoption of renewables and through codes and standards for home heating/insulation/good build practices.
So while your statement may resonate with some of the past - it does not handcuff us to a future trajectory. It is possible to change and it is happening - it just needs to happen faster and increase in its scale.
Also - we did stop using whale oil in the early 1900s so your statement is not 100%.
[+] [-] analognoise|4 years ago|reply
I'm having trouble finding whale oil for my vintage lamp...
[+] [-] einpoklum|4 years ago|reply
That is a misrepresentation. The fact that a bunch of other people in another country use, say, more biomass now than in the past since there are more of them than in the past, does not mean that in your country there hasn't been a displacement of biomass with, say, coal. And indeed, coal had displaced biomass in many countries in the world. And natural gas displaced coal in some places.
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spodek|4 years ago|reply
From the article:
> not yet investing at sufficient scale in technologies that support fast decarbonisation of their economies
The most effective "technology" is to consume less. What will do that is acting on different values, instead of growth, enjoying what we have, instead of efficiency, resilience, instead of comfort and convenience, meaning, purpose, and the satisfaction of a job well done. Human societies lived with those values for hundreds of thousands of years in some cases, and centuries in many others, with higher markers of health, longevity, stability, and equality than our culture until very recently, but those markers are going back down. And will drop precipitously if we don't return to those values.
Population growth may be leveling off in the most polluting nations, but it's globally growing and over sustainable levels. Economically we can sustain population decreasing and many nations have lowered birth rates with the opposite of the One Child Policy coercion or eugenics, purely voluntary, noncoercive, leading to stability, health, and abundance.
> “Every day, we witness the worsening consequences of the climate crisis for communities around the world – farmers’ crops failing; floods and fires engulfing towns and villages; families facing an uncertain future."
We can dance around sustainability issues all we want, we eventually reach both overpopulation and overconsumption, both driven by growth, both driven by cultural beliefs and values we can change. This community loves nuclear, but without considering your point, that we aren't using new energies to replace but to augment. If we ever expect to stop growing and instead shrinking our polluting behavior, the sooner the better, as in now, which requires leadership more like Churchill, Mandela, MLK, and peers, not new technology. It costs nothing and improves our lives. When we learn to reduce consumption, nuclear will help. With our current values, we'll keep growing until hitting its limits, back where we are now, but with more people and dependency, making reduction harder.
To quantify all this, I recommend Tom Murphy's book Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, which I wrote about https://joshuaspodek.com/the-science-book-of-the-decade-ener....
[+] [-] stragio|4 years ago|reply
https://braveneweurope.com/alf-hornborg-a-globalised-solar-p...
[+] [-] asdff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andy_ppp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thehappypm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheGigaChad|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] adamsvystun|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbmuser|4 years ago|reply
If you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively, you must support nuclear power.
France went the nuclear path and their energy sector causes 50 million tons of CO2 per year.
Germany went the renewable path and their annual energy sector emissions are about 300 million tons of CO2.
They were a bit less in both countries due to Covid-19 causing shutdowns of industries.
[+] [-] KozmoNau7|4 years ago|reply
Not really. They held on hard to gas and coal power. Of the latter, a disturbing amount is still based on lignite or brown coal, which is more accurately described as "somewhat combustible dirt".
Germany is not nearly as dedicated to green energy as they would like the world to think. They shut down their nuclear sector due to fear, and primarily replaced it with more fossil energy.
I do agree that nuclear power is something we should be more positive towards, but that does not invalidate renewable energy sources.
[+] [-] silvester23|4 years ago|reply
Although I agree that in order to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in the short term, nuclear power seems like the best option right now.
[+] [-] j_wtf_all_taken|4 years ago|reply
Very strong statement but no evidence whatsoever.
Germany's a bad example, we're (that is: the government during the last 16 years) doing a lot to keep really old crappy coal power plants running and slow the transformation towards renewables. And still, 50% of the electricity is produced by renewables.
[+] [-] adrianN|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novaRom|4 years ago|reply
Right now the United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres.
Events like Chernobyl and Fukushima will certainly happen again and again.
[+] [-] legulere|4 years ago|reply
France has a huge problem having to replace crumbling nuclear power plants with new ones being too expensive and too slow to build.
[+] [-] tamaharbor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchredbull|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ericson2314|4 years ago|reply
I take no issue with this. Keynes is right you need to prop back up aggregate demand, and keep people fed.
> bailed out companies indiscriminately whereas built basically no transit, no green infrastructure whatsoever.
That's the bad part. The demand-side stimulus should be indiscriminate because the supply-side policy should be extremely targeted. People buy whatever the good deal is, like an electric field pulls hardest on the stuff with the most charge. Its essential to to puppeteer the supply side so the environmentally good things are the good deals.
[+] [-] tekstar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RileyJames|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alfl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] premium-komodo|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] 0x_rs|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-09/edf-lifts...
[1] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/finlands-spent-fuel-rep...
[+] [-] tchalla|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] poxwole|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatever1|4 years ago|reply
To fix the demand side we need technological advances and help from regulation. BUT. Regulation itself cannot solve the problem. That is the elephant in the room. Regulations come and go, and they are bound by borders, but once a technology has been discovered there is no going back.
Tesla's 250 mile car and charging network in 2010 was the reason that gasoline will die in the US, not the 7k tax incentive on a 60k car.
[+] [-] valprop1|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsX4qHgDlZM
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] stjohnswarts|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lenkite|4 years ago|reply
2020 was the first year the US exported more petroleum than it imported on an annual basis. But due to the sudden federal approved decline in 2021, US will now import more oil in 2022.
https://www.worldoil.com/news/2021/2/17/us-will-import-62-mo...
[+] [-] woutr_be|4 years ago|reply
But if let’s say fossil fuel commitment has gone down, while green energy goes up, then that’s a different, more positive story.
[+] [-] tejohnso|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrepd|4 years ago|reply
A Georgist approach to this would probably alleviate many of the most pressing problems of global neoliberal capitalism.
[+] [-] uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] williesleg|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rocknor|4 years ago|reply
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
[+] [-] dahjkol|4 years ago|reply