Clean Energy Is Surging, but Not Fast Enough to Solve Global Warming

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

Clean Energy Is Surging, but Not Fast Enough to Solve Global Warming

By Brad Plumer
Nov. 12, 2018

WASHINGTON — Over the next two decades, the world’s energy system will undergo a huge transformation. Wind and solar power are poised to become dominant sources of electricity. China’s once-relentless appetite for coal is set to wane. The amount of oil we use to fuel our cars could peak and decline.

But there’s a catch: The global march toward clean energy still isn’t happening fast enough to avoid dangerous global warming, at least not unless governments put forceful new policy measures in place to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

That’s the conclusion of the International Energy Agency, which on Monday published its annual World Energy Outlook, a 661-page report that forecasts global energy trends to 2040. These projections are especially difficult right now because the world’s energy markets, which usually evolve gradually, are going through a major upheaval.

Here are some of the report’s major themes:

Wind and solar are making gains

Around the world, the electricity sector “is experiencing its most dramatic transformation since its creation more than a century ago,” the report said. One big factor is the rapid growth of wind and solar power.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/climate/global-energy-forecast.html

[zipplewrath]

1. Never will

Aircraft, trucks, trains, and yes cows and pigs are always going to be a problem, at least until we figure out how to achieve meaningful reductions in those green house gas producers. (There's actually a study going on right now on reducing cow methane production through feed modifications).

[defacto7]

2. Agreed. plus the fact that present trends in

renewables will never fill that void let alone cover their own ecological footprint without major technological advances. We must end fossil fuel useage and stop producing pollutants that undermine the environment, using solutions that create less pollution than they produce and in a measure that covers the difference.
How? That's a huge order and practically if not actually insurmountable if economics is the only determining factor and we continue to cling to unreasonable prejudices.

Human thinking must change. This will prove more difficult than our survival.

Use what works. Use what works without unfounded prejudice. Make the technological advancements necessary, economics be damned.

[zipplewrath]

3. Carbon removal

Truth is, especially where we already are, I only see any kind of path forward where we find a carbon removal method that we can use to remove significant amount of carbon and sequester it. That's the only way we can buy the time necessary to create the technologies we'll need to replace planes and trucks and trains and cows and....