PERILOUSLY WORSENING THE WARMING UP OF PLANET EARTH
by Frank Thomas
Part 2
Part 1 here
SHARE OF GLOBAL ELECTRICITY POWER FROM RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES
The world’s 36 Gt fossil CO2 emissions and 13 Gt non-CO2 equivalent emissions of CH4, N2O and F-gases must be reduced dramatically in next two decades to avoid a calamitous overheating of the planet by 2050. But the transition to green energy is going far TOO SLOWLY. TABLES 3, 4, show for example the greater URGENCY and SPEED crucially needed in shifting to renewables for electricity power production. About 70% of world CO2 emissions comes from Electricity and Transportation. It took 20 years to reach 7.5% renewables for world production of electricity power in 2016. Now we must take that 7.5% to at least 75%-80% renewables by 2050 – a ten-fold increase in just 30 years!
The EU is on target towards a ±75% renewable capacity for production of electricity power by 2050. Germany and Denmark are world leaders in installed per capita capacity of solar and wind. But heavily populated, vibrant economic countries like U.S., China, India, Russia, Japan must move FASTER to be at a +75% renewable energy mix from wind, solar PV, biomass, bio-fuel, geothermal for electrical power production by 2050.
Following is a summary overview of progress to date by 5 major emitters and EU 28 countries in using renewables for electrical power production in 2016.
2016 % SHARE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY IN GROSS POWER PRODUCTION
|
Renewables
|
Renewables Incl. Hydro
|
China
|
6.2%
|
25.1%
|
U.S.
|
8.5%
|
14.5%
|
EU 28
|
21.1%
|
35.1%
|
India
|
5.4%
|
14.8%
|
Russia
|
--
|
17.2%
|
Japan
|
10.2%
|
18.0%
|
Selected EU Countries
|
|
|
Germany
|
|
33.3%
|
Scandinavia
|
|
64.0%
|
Portugal
|
|
54.1%
|
Spain
|
|
36.5%
|
Italy
|
|
34.3%
|
EU’s 35.1% renewable mix for power production of 21.1% renewables and 14% hydro is 2.5 times U.S.’s 14.5% tiny renewable mix of 8.5% renewables and 6% hydro. Germany’s 33.3% renewable mix includes 22.3% wind and solar, 7.0% biomass, 0.9% waste, and 3.1% hydro. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland have achieved a colossal 64% average varied renewable mix for electrical power production. Their renewable energy mixes are country-to-country interconnected for cost-efficient, timely exchange of power supply when the wind isn’t blowing. The Nordic common power market and power exchange has facilitated strong wind energy development. This balancing energy market allows Swedish and Norwegian reservoir hydropower to provide cheap, short-term flexibility to entire Nordic system – a flexibility Denmark can rely on for changes in its variable renewable wind power demand and generation that produced 44% of its electricity in 2017. (see: Nordic Power Market Design and Thermal Power Plant Flexibility, by Energinet, May 18, 2018)
On windy or sunny days, peak 70% shares of variable power production occur already in countries like Denmark and Germany – proof that a daily managing of a power system with large shares of variable power production is technically feasible. Scandinavia, Germany Portugal, Spain, Italy, UK are on a path of producing at least +75% of their electrical power with renewables by 2040.
TABLE 3
2016 ELECTRICITY POWER PRODUCTION: FOSSIL, RENEWABLES, HYDRO, NUCLEAR - (unit: TWh = Terawatt hours
|
FOSSIL
|
WIND /SOLAR
|
OTHER RENEW.
|
TOTAL RENEW.
|
HYDRO
|
NUCLEAR
|
TOTAL
|
CHINA
|
4386
|
307
|
73
|
380
|
1163
|
213
|
6142
|
U.S.
|
287
|
286
|
85
|
371
|
262
|
848
|
4352
|
EU 28
|
997
|
413
|
187
|
600
|
398
|
846
|
2841
|
INDIA
|
1161
|
57
|
16
|
73
|
129
|
--
|
1363
|
TOP 4
|
9415
|
1063
|
361
|
1424
|
1952
|
1907
|
14698
|
RUSSIA
|
703
|
--
|
--
|
--
|
187
|
197
|
1087
|
JAPAN
|
819
|
77
|
27
|
104
|
80
|
20
|
1023
|
TOP 6
|
10937
|
1140
|
388
|
1528
|
2219
|
2124
|
16808
|
WORLD
|
16323
|
1293
|
562
|
1855
|
4023
|
2587
|
24788
|
%
|
65.9%
|
5.2%
|
2.3%
|
7.5%
|
16.2%
|
10.4%
|
100%
|
TABLE 4
2016 % SHARES OF ELECTRICITY POWER PRODUCTION BY ENERGY MIX
|
FOSSIL
|
WIND
|
SOLAR
|
OTHER RENEW.
|
TOTAL RENEW.
|
HYDRO
|
NUCLEAR
|
CHINA
|
71.4%
|
3.9%
|
1.1%
|
1.2%
|
6.2%
|
18.9%
|
3.5%
|
U.S
|
66.0%
|
5.3%
|
1.3%
|
1.9%
|
8.5%
|
6.0%
|
19.5%
|
EU 28
|
35.1%
|
10.6%
|
3.9%
|
6.6%
|
21.1%
|
14.0%
|
29.8%
|
INDIA
|
85.2%
|
3.3%
|
0.9%
|
1.2%
|
5.4%
|
9.4%
|
--
|
TOP 4
|
64.0%
|
5.5%
|
1.7%
|
2.5%
|
9.7%
|
13.3%
|
13.0%
|
RUSSIA
|
64.7%
|
--
|
--
|
--
|
--
|
17.2%
|
18.1%
|
JAPAN
|
80.1%
|
2.5%
|
5.0%
|
2.7%
|
10.2%
|
7.8%
|
1.9%
|
TOP 6
|
65.1%
|
5.0%
|
1.8%
|
2.3%
|
9.1%
|
13.2%
|
12.6%
|
WORLD
|
65.9%
|
3.9%
|
1.3%
|
2.3%
|
7.5%
|
16.2%
|
10.4%
|
Sources: Trends in Global CO2 and Total Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 2017 Report by J.R.C. Olivier, K.M. Schure, J.A.H.W. Peters, Published by PBL Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency; BP, 2017 _____________________________________________________________________________________
In 2016, the world’s total electricity power production was produced 66% from fossil fuel combustion, a TINY 7.5% from renewables, 16% from hydro, and 10.5% from nuclear. Since 2010, the quicker transition to renewables for producing global electric power is still at a rate FAR BELOW what’s needed.
China and India’s renewable powered electrical supply excluding hydro were at an extremely low 6.2% and 5.4%, respectively. China and India emit a phenomenal 36% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Both countries rely on dirty coal for ±60% of their power production. Very low renewables and a gigantic dependence on coal and small nuclear energy is why China is world’s largest CO2 emitter at 29% of global emissions. The country is working at a feverish pace to expand wind and solar energy sources significantly. For China, it’s a deadly race against time; the outcome is uncertain.
China and India’s +6% GDP growth rates reflect a heavy pace of modernization, industrialization, commercialization for 2.8 billion people, ±2 billion of whom have a bare minimum living standard and share very poorly in the economic progress generated. As this improves, broader worker spending on vehicles, air-conditioning equipment, electrical products for homes, etc., will raise pressures for much more electricity supply … and CO2 emissions! Since 1990, India’s economy has advanced at considerably less speed and scale than China’s … but recent years reveal that’s clearly changing.
CO2 emissions of both countries have grown over 4 times higher than 1990 levels. China’s 2016 10 Gt CO2 emissions could well rise 50% and India’s 2.5 Gt could well rise 100% to a total of 20 Gt in next 2 decades. That is 50% of world CO2 emissions today. If it happens, planet Earth will become an environmental Hot Hell by 2050. The fate of our planet’s living-species hangs much on ALL countries moving FAST to renewables and efficient energy use, but that fate hangs MAMMOTHLY much on China and India!
The EU 28 has a balanced energy mix upon which to produce electrical power. An extremely low 35% (TABLE 4) of EU electrical power comes from fossil, 21% from Renewables, 14% from Hydro, and a 30% from nuclear. Half of EU’s nuclear energy comes from France for producing 82% of its electricity. EU renewable energy share (excluding hydro) is 3.5 times China’s, 2.5 times U.S.’s, and 4 times India’s. With exception of U.S., programs to a systemically and timely phase out of coal are occurring in a number of countries. As noted, nuclear power and natural gas will remain energy-bridges until renewables take over. Germany and UK plan to phase out of nuclear over next decade or two. More and more power companies are adjusting strategies towards renewables so they can become participants in future energy transition markets – even though solar PV, wind, and other renewables are at an infant scale in powering electricity production.
SUMMARY
The careful natural carbon cycle balance the world had – with carbon exchanged between plants and animals, ground and water, with enough staying for a time in the atmosphere that keeps the planet warm but not too warm – has been knocked far out of balance. That explains why CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere to dangerous concentration levels. The result is a mounting excessive overheating of the planet’s atmosphere, land, and oceans. One climate expert explained in Plain English this sunlight “heat radiation-in” and sunlight “heat radiation-out” imbalance.
“Simply by being present in the atmosphere, CO2 absorbs infrared light radiation emitted by the Earth. You can liken this to what happens when you put a “blanket” over yourself. The fibers of the blanket, and the air trapped between those fibers, absorb the heat from your body and trap it near you, preventing it from quickly escaping into the larger volume of air in the room. So, by absorbing the infrared light radiation, CO2 keeps the heat in the atmosphere longer; and the more CO2 you add to the air, the “thicker” the “blanket” becomes. We KNOW that the planet’s CO2 “blanket” is more than a third thicker than it was before the industrial revolution. We KNOW that we are the ones thickening it. We KNOW that CO2 traps infrared light radiation. And we KNOW that the atmospheric and ocean global temperatures are rising.”
CO2 has a lifespan of a 100 years, to 1,000 years, up to 10,000 years before it exits the atmosphere. A reduction in emissions today will lower far into the future the heating, but will not result in the reduced, cooler temperatures needed now. Scientifically and humanly, this means that heat-trapping greenhouse gases released today from cars, trucks, airplanes, industrial activities, power plants are determining the survival existence of future generations of all living species.
We are going to have to evolve – quicker than we can fathom perhaps – to a new fundamental way of being a civilization that firstly protects the planet’s health to insure our own sustainable future. To avoid a massive die-off or a complete collapse, a dramatic reconfiguration of human society over next three decades is necessary. This cries for prioritizing, integrating following fundamental energy and lifestyle actions:
-
Accelerating the pace of getting out of fossil fuels
-
Expanding vastly at a fast rate variable renewable energy sources
-
Focusing intensely on ways to increase energy efficiencies
-
Creating green deserts; restoring rain forests
-
Extensive planting of trees; strictly limiting deforestation
-
Eating plant-based foods or lab-based meat, a far more efficient energy lifestyle vs. feeding plants to animals, then eating the animals
-
De-concentrating animals and huge animal waste on industrial farms
-
Offering good energy deals for consumers with transparent costs and easy switching among providers
-
Shortening and broadening the technology innovation cycle
-
Investing wisely, timely in sustainable energy options, efficiencies: bicycle paths, the 100 mile efficient energy electric vehicle, floating offshore wind mills, wind-solar hybrid generation, alternative power storage choices such as gas-burning power plants that capture and bury emissions, nuclear reactors on floating power plants, advanced nuclear or thorium-based power plants or geothermal plants.
Time is not on our side. Planet Earth reacts unfavorably to political power manipulators who play casino with the risks of a once in a million years planetary threatening climate change – in such a short, menacing geological time frame.
On the positive side, the costs of wind and solar PV are plummeting and are expected to continue declining. The levelized cost of electricity from renewable energy sources, or lifetime cost of electricity, is going straight down. This is exciting and gives hope that the day of an accelerating en masse use of renewables for electricity and transportation has come. U.S. wind/solar/other renewables supply a tiny 8.5% of our electricity vs. nearly 20% for California. A bill just approved by Gov. Brown’s puts the state on a path to supply 60% of its electricity with renewables by 2030, to have a 100% clean energy grid by 2045.
Germany, Scandinavia, California exemplify the unified, coordinated “Clean Energy Marshall Plan” engagement critically needed worldwide. Otherwise, irreversibility sets in – sealing life’s prospects on Earth. Astrophysicist Adam Frank’s book – “Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth” – clearly explores the options for our civilization to get off our calamitous climate change course, before it’s too late. Our children’s children, their children, and generations beyond will inherit the dastardly, deadly living environment we left them … by our inability to radically and quickly temper the new planet climate-change realities humans in the main are causing.
Frank Thomas, The Netherlands, September 9, 2018
A graduate of Bowdoin and Dartmouth colleges, for many years Frank was an independent management consultant and entrepreneur working with Dutch international shipbuilding and offshore oil/gas contracting firms. In past years up to recent retirement at 77, he has been a trainer for firms such as ING, DSM, Siemens, the Dutch Ministries of Foreign and Economic Affairs and Justice in the Hague and also a teacher/lecturer at The Hague University and NTI University in Leiden. Subjects covered have included finance, commercial law, legal writing, report writing, presentations, etc. All his time now is devoted to research for writings on grave national and global issues.
He is an independent-minded Mainer, a liberal-conservative. Over time, he has come to loath the mind numbing indoctrination inherent in the “ideological-pure and money talks” political culture poisoning and grid-locking our national dialogue on extremely serious structural societal problems. Such times of volatile change call for a fusion of the ‘brightest and best’ ideas/reforms that ensure a prudent, fair balancing of legitimate public interests, concern for the common folk’s progress in concert with a thriving market-innovative capitalism.
FOOTNOTE:
Global warming is not an “Alarmist Charade” as skeptic Princeton physicist, Dr. William Happer has been propagating for almost three decades – directly to the receptive ears of our president who also trivializes the extensive peer-reviewed scientific evidence of human-induced climate-warming. Dr. Happer is a prominent physicist, but he is not a climate scientist. He’s had no peer-reviewed papers published that contradict the scientific consensus on the role of certain gases in causing a “greenhouse effect” and the significant negative impacts of high levels of GHGs in the atmosphere.
The huge CO2 increases humanity has been putting into the atmosphere at such a geologically lightening speed are driving temperatures way out of “habitable” ranges globally. This includes the oceans and acidification of same, sea level rise from rapid meltdown of sunlight radiation-reflective Arctic ice and carbon release from melting permafrost, disturbance of the water cycle, higher atmospheric water vapour, precipitation and weather extremes, leading to calamitous forest fires, droughts, floods, giant tornadoes, mass migrations, etc. Dr. Happer’s weak climate science knowhow and credibility is reflected in his constant understating of the degree and negative impacts of global warming and overstating of the benefits of ‘unlimited’ CO2 to help plant life.
Distinguished climate scientist and Princeton alumnus, Dr. Michael MacCracken published an illuminating 42-page scientific rebuttal of Dr. Happer’s article, “The Truth About Greenhouse Gases: The Dubious Science of Climate Crusaders” by Dr. William Happer, May 2011. SEE: MacCracken vs. Happer: “The Real Truth About Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change” – Paragraph-by-Paragraph Comments on an Article Written by Dr. William Happer, by Dr. Michael C. MacCracken, Sept. 2011.