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The Climate Change Thread

jje1000 said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1212542200954982402
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I find this person's position untenable.

Germany is not going all-in on coal; and nuclear still has no means of safely storing or disposing of waste.

The German position is a reasonable one, a popular one, and moreover, I see no evidence of rising coal power supply in the chart below.

It would appear from other articles I sampled that the argument is one that coal would be phased-out more quickly were nuclear still a larger part of the power supply mix.

That makes the statement above so much hyperbole that seems less about the use of efficient and responsible generation techniques that shilling for the nuclear industry.


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Image Credit: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts
 
United States Spend Ten Times More On Fossil Fuel Subsidies Than Education

From link.

A new International Monetary Fund (IMF) study shows that USD$5.2 trillion was spent globally on fossil fuel subsidies in 2017. The equivalent of over 6.5% of global GDP of that year, it also represented a half-trillion dollar increase since 2015 when China ($1.4 trillion), the United States ($649 billion) and Russia ($551 billion) were the largest subsidizers.
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Despite nations worldwide committing to a reduction in carbon emissions and implementing renewable energy through the Paris Agreement, the IMF’s findings expose how fossil fuels continue to receive huge amounts of taxpayer funding. The report explains that fossil fuels account for 85% of all global subsidies and that they remain largely attached to domestic policy. Had nations reduced subsidies in a way to create efficient fossil fuel pricing in 2015, the International Monetary Fund believes that it “would have lowered global carbon emissions by 28 percent and fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46 percent, and increased government revenue by 3.8 percent of GDP.”

The study includes the negative externalities caused by fossil fuels that society has to pay for, not reflected in their actual costs. In addition to direct transfers of government money to fossil fuel companies, this includes the indirect costs of pollution, such as healthcare costs and climate change adaptation. By including these numbers, the true cost of fossil fuel use to society is reflected.
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Nations worldwide have continued to support the natural gas and petroleum industries. This is evident by the energy policies of the United States and Australia, who have continued to rely heavily on fossil fuels. Meanwhile the world’s largest subsidizer of fossil fuels, China has actively looked to follow efficient fossil fuel guidelines and continues to spend record-amounts on fossil fuels.
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As the prices associated with fossil-fuel power generation continue to increase and become harder for utility companies to justify, the price of renewable energy has also plummeted. Along with the IMF report, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) released its own study looking into how the renewable energy industry has grown over a similar time period. The cost of onshore wind power generation has dropped 23% since 2010, while solar electricity saw a decrease of 73%.
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With renewable energy production becoming cheaper and fossil fuels following the opposite trend, it has left many industry experts asking why subsidies for the latter have increased. The IMF’s study identifies more than just direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industries but also the costs on society, public health and climate change that are caused by the coal, petroleum and natural gas sectors.
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The combination of the fossil fuel industry’s investment within its sector and the high profit margins have led many companies to protect their subsidies. The fossil fuel lobby has actively worked in many countries to protect their subsidies and avoid the imposition of carbon taxes. Doing so protects their profits.

Fossil Fuel Inefficiency

Whilst cheaper renewable energy creates more competition in the energy markets, it also decreases the cost-effectiveness of fossil fuel subsidies. Simon Buckle, the head of climate change, biodiversity and water division at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development explains: “Subsidies tend to stay in the system and they can become very costly as the cost of new technologies falls. Cost reductions like this were not envisageable even 10 years ago. They have transformed the situation and many renewables are now cost competitive in different locations with coal.”
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Buckle’s analysis of the inefficiency of fossil fuel subsidies is illustrated best by the United States’ own expenditure: the $649 billion the US spent on these subsidies in 2015 is more than the country’s defense budget and 10 times the federal spending for education . When read in conjunction with a recent study showing that up to 80% of the United States could in principle be powered by renewables, the amount spent on fossil fuel subsidies seems even more indefensible.

IMF leader Christine Lagarde has noted that the investments made into fossil fuels could be better spent elsewhere, and could have far reaching positive impacts: “There would be more public spending available to build hospitals, to build roads, to build schools and to support education and health for the people. We believe that removing fossil fuel subsidies is the right way to go.”
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Although some nations are taking steps to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and cutting back on investment within those industries, others are not. Domestic policies are largely responsible for the continued support for the fossil fuel industries. Yet, with the continued drop in the costs of renewable energy, private entities are taking over and ensuring that the clean energy transition continues despite the unwavering support the fossil fuel industry receives from both governments and businesses.

Renewable energy is set to overtake fossil fuels as the energy source of the future, with or without the subsidies paid out for coal, petroleum and natural gas. Fossil fuel advocates have long made the case that removing direct and indirect subsidies would be damaging to the global economy - but the IMF clearly disagrees.
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Last edited:
Some rough calcs based on quick google data of electrical production ( not total energy production or consumption which also includes transportation fuel etc.) so I would welcome being corrected:

-Canada produces 24 times as much renewable electricity as Denmark or 3.6x per capita. Denmark also still burns more fossil fuels in there electrical mix as of 2017 23% versus 19%. What that means is electrification and conservation are real option for Canada to realistically curtail CO2 emissions without sacrificing too much in living standards.

-The rest of the world is pretty well screwed and electrification (electric cars etc.) hold little hope of reducing global emissions in any way to limit climate change (sorry just being realistic here)

Here are the top 5 electrical producing countries and their energy source:

1) China - 70% fossil fuels 2017
2) US - 63.6% fossil fuels 2018
3) India - 80% fossil fuels 2019
4) Russia - 64% fossil fuels 2017
5) Japan - 80% fossil fuels 2015
6) Canada - 19% fossil fuels 2017

That is also production capacity. The numbers would look worse if you used base-load adjustments. Renewable capacity is overstated because it doesn’t run continuously.

Conclusion: prepare to adapt to climate change. Only Canada which has low carbon reliance and Japan which is committing demographic suicide has any hope of controlling co2 emissions from power production


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TrickyRicky said:
Some rough calcs based on quick google data of electrical production ( not total energy production or consumption which also includes transportation fuel etc.) so I would welcome being corrected:

-Canada produces 24 times as much renewable electricity as Denmark or 3.6x per capita. Denmark also still burns more fossil fuels in there electrical mix as of 2017 23% versus 19%. What that means is electrification and conservation are real option for Canada to realistically curtail CO2 emissions without sacrificing too much in living standards.

-The rest of the world is pretty well screwed and electrification (electric cars etc.) hold little hope of reducing global emissions in any way to limit climate change (sorry just being realistic here)

Here are the top 5 electrical producing countries and their energy source:

1) China - 70% fossil fuels 2017
2) US - 63.6% fossil fuels 2018
3) India - 80% fossil fuels 2019
4) Russia - 64% fossil fuels 2017
5) Japan - 80% fossil fuels 2015
6) Canada - 19% fossil fuels 2017

That is also production capacity. The numbers would look worse if you used base-load adjustments. Renewable capacity is overstated because it doesn’t run continuously.

Conclusion: prepare to adapt to climate change. Only Canada which has low carbon reliance and Japan which is committing demographic suicide has any hope of controlling co2 emissions from power production


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To be fair, maybe Hydro should be removed from that stat. It is basically due to geographic good fortune and nothing to do with renewable energy policy.
 
BurlOak said:
To be fair, maybe Hydro should be removed from that stat. It is basically due to geographic good fortune and nothing to do with renewable energy policy.
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Do you mean hyrdoelectric (as opposed to capitalized "Hydro")? A good policy takes advantage of the resources you have at hand. That would be like saying Saskatchewan shouldn't be included in worldwide grain production.
 
lenaitch said:
Do you mean hyrdoelectric (as opposed to capitalized "Hydro")? A good policy takes advantage of the resources you have at hand. That would be like saying Saskatchewan shouldn't be included in worldwide grain production.
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Yes, I meant hydro-electric.
So China, USA, India, Russia and Japan all have good policies regarding energy because they are all taking advantage of the resources that they have at hand.
Canada (well, I assume BC and Ontario, Quebec and NFLD) use hydro-electric due to geography - not some altruistic reason.

It would be like praising Saskatchewan for producing grain, and chastising Nunavut for not.
 
BurlOak said:
Yes, I meant hydro-electric.
So China, USA, India, Russia and Japan all have good policies regarding energy because they are all taking advantage of the resources that they have at hand.
Canada (well, I assume BC and Ontario, Quebec and NFLD) use hydro-electric due to geography - not some altruistic reason.

It would be like praising Saskatchewan for producing grain, and chastising Nunavut for not.
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Ya, I'm not getting your point.
 
Despite our efforts global CO2 emissions in my opinion will likely follow a logistic function with total emissions skyrocketing then trending towards a constant level at some value greater than today. That means humanity will pump out more CO2 annually than today likely indefinitely this century with reduction gains matched by demographic trends.
 
Northern Light said:
I find this person's position untenable.

Germany is not going all-in on coal; and nuclear still has no means of safely storing or disposing of waste.

The German position is a reasonable one, a popular one, and moreover, I see no evidence of rising coal power supply in the chart below.

It would appear from other articles I sampled that the argument is one that coal would be phased-out more quickly were nuclear still a larger part of the power supply mix.

That makes the statement above so much hyperbole that seems less about the use of efficient and responsible generation techniques that shilling for the nuclear industry.
Click to expand...

Meh, I don't buy it. The "Green" (industry term) revolution in Germany has been fundamentally been undercut by the coal lobby and by nuclear hyperbole/fearmongering (nuclear waste can be safely stored, while coal disperses of its same radioactive waste over the local area).

Their energy policy should have been the other way around- the phasing out of ligmite (dirty brown) coal while retaining their nuclear fleet as a sustainable baseline power supply. Intermittency is always going to be problem that renewables can't solve anytime soon.

With a generation of power stations built in the 1970s having to be replaced around this time, utilities across much of Europe doubled down on polluting coal. In Britain this dash for coal was aborted in 2008-9 by the financial crisis and the Brown government’s turn to a more aggressive climate policy. Germany was not so fortunate. As the International Energy Agency remarked in retrospect, in the early 2000s Germany’s utilities led “one of the biggest investment waves into domestic coal capacities since the post-war reconstruction.” Questions about environmental sustainability were answered by gesturing vaguely towards the always-just-over-the-horizon promise of carbon capture and sequestration. The environmental ministry led by Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel connived in this green-washing.

The result was schizophrenic. At the same time as Germany’s green pioneers drove a small-scale revolution in renewable energy generation, its utilities positioned themselves as low-cost providers of coal-fired electricity for the booming economies of central Europe. As the renewables share grew at home, Germany’s giant utilities became exporters of cheap, dirty power to the rest of Europe.
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www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

How Britain beat Germany in the race for green energy - Prospect Magazine

What has emerged in the UK is a fast-moving, high-tech, corporate energy transition—but the old dream of a decentralised and democratic system lives on
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk
 
New record for total global CO2 emissions. We are still in the steep ascent portion of the logistic function (not even at the point of decelerating emissions growth). Renewables plus nuclear etc. are growing fast but fossil fuel energy use is growing even faster. The gap is growing not shrinking
 
Thunberg calls on Siemens to nix Australia coal mine project

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has urged supporters to put pressure on German firm Siemens over its plan to supply equipment to a coal mining operation. The firm says it has "the same goal of fighting climate change."

As wildfires continue to ravage Australia — the world's biggest coal exporter — Thunberg urged Twitter followers to help by "pushing them to make the only right decision. #StopAdani."

Adani is the name of a new coal mine under construction in Queensland. Run by India's Adani Power, the Australian government approved the project last year. Siemens is supposed to provide part of the signalling system for the railway lines necessary for moving the coal out of the plant and to the coast.

Siemens has already been targeted by the Fridays for Future climate protests, both in the form of physical demonstrations but also some 63,000 emails asking the company to consider climate breakdown and walk back its support for the coal industry.

m.dw.com

Thunberg calls on Siemens to nix Australia coal mine project – DW – 01/12/2020

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has urged supporters to pressure Siemens over its plan to supply equipment to a coal mining operation. Another activist rejected the company's offer to put her on the Siemens Energy board.
m.dw.com m.dw.com
 
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