US Consumed More Energy from Renewables Than Coal in 2019
by John Lawrence, September 24, 2020
In 2019, U.S. annual energy consumption from renewable sources exceeded coal consumption for the first time since before 1885, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Monthly Energy Review. Despite that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were up .6% in 2019 over 2018. The world is still going the wrong way. In order to keep global temperatures to within a 2 degree C increase, we have to decrease GHGs between now and 2050 so that there are net zero GHGs emitted by 2050. This will be hard to do as developing countries are still installing coal fired electricity generating plants. However, they are just trying to catch up with the US which has contributed much more in terms of GHGs than any other nation over history starting with the industrial age.
GE has dropped its coal fired power business. GE was one of the largest manufacturers of coal fired power generating plants. Five years ago it bought Alstom's power business, which makes coal-fueled turbines, for $9.5 billion. Now that investment is a total loss. GE has laid off thousands of power workers, slashed its dividend to a penny, fired two CEOs and sharply written down the value of its power business. GE's exit from coal "highlights the billions of dollars of shareholder value destruction that is embodied with the failed Alstom acquisition," John Inch, senior analyst at Gordon Haskett Research Advisors, said. GE's jet engine business is also way off thanks to the pandemic and the decline of airline revenues. GE's stock has gone down since the announcement that it is getting out of the coal business.
China is still very much involved in the coal business despite its goal of reducing GHG emissions. China’s “economic miracle” has seen the country become the world’s second-largest economy and pulled nearly a billion people out of poverty. But this progress has been built on a boom in energy from coal, and China has also become the world’s largest carbon polluter by far. It's a trade off between economic growth based on cheap and plentiful coal or a desire to reduce GHGs. China’s CO2 emissions increased again by around 2% in 2019, based on recently released official economic data, and 65% of the annual growth in energy consumption came from fossil fuels.
India also is building more coal fired plants in an attempt to grow and develop its economy. India, the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, saw its annual coal demand rise 9.1% to nearly 1 billion tons in the year ended March 2019. Coal demand from utilities accounted for over three-quarters of total consumption. India expects coal-fired power capacity to grow 22% in 3 years. This is bad news for India's cities which are highly polluted at the present time and will only get worse. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambition to make India a $5 trillion economy by 2024 and turn the country into a manufacturing hub will require industries to have access to continuous and dependable power supplies. It is also bad news for the world which needs to decrease GHG emissions if a climate catastrophe is to be avoided. If GHGs keep being emitted into the atmosphere, the goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to 2 degrees C will not be met and the earth will become uninhabitable in many regions.
It's very important that the US cooperate with China, India and Russia which is number 4 in world GHG emissions. The world needs to pull together on this issue. Instead the US at the present time is going forward with its fossil fuel industry especially fracking and natural gas which is methane, an even more potent GHG than carbon dioxide. The US is also increasing tensions with China in particular under the Trump administration while a Democratic administration would probably be hostile against Russia. This is not helpful or constructive in terms of the cooperation needed to convert to non polluting renewable energy as quickly as possible and as universally as possible. Instead of harping on the shortcomings of these countries, it's of paramount importance that the whole world unite in an attempt to reduce GHG emissions. Intellectual property protection is just not important. Patents are not important because it is unthinkable that individuals or corporations would seek to profit off technologies invented to save the world from global warming. All those technologies and intellectual property should be widely shared with other countries in order to bring down GHG emissions. The alternative is that the world burns because nations refuse to give up their petty squabbles.
