Coal emits more than ever

From the Washington Post:

Global energy experts released grim findings Monday, saying that not only are planet-warming carbon-dioxide emissions still increasing, but the world’s growing thirst for energy has led to higher emissions from coal-fired power plants than ever before.

Energy demand around the world grew by 2.3 percent over the past year, marking the most rapid increase in a decade, according to the report from the International Energy Agency. To meet that demand, largely fueled by a booming economy, countries turned to an array of sources, including renewables.

But nothing filled the void quite like fossil fuels, which satisfied nearly 70 percent of the skyrocketing electricity demand, according to the agency, which analyzes energy trends on behalf of 30 member countries, including the United States.

In particular, a fleet of relatively young coal plants located in Asia, with decades to go on their lifetimes, led the way toward a record for emissions from coal fired power plants — exceeding 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide “for the first time,” the agency said. In Asia, “average plants are only 12 years old, decades younger than their average economic lifetime of around 40 years,” the agency found.

As a result, greenhouse-gas emissions from the use of energy — by far their largest source — surged in 2018, reaching an record high of 33.1 billion tons. Emissions showed 1.7 percent growth, well above the average since 2010. The growth in global emissions in 2018 alone was “equivalent to the total emissions from international aviation,” the body found.

China, for instance, satisfied a demand for more energy last year with some new generation from renewables. But it relied far more on natural gas, coal and oil. In India, about half of all new demand was similarly met by coal-fired power plants.

In the United States, by contrast, coal is declining — but most of the increase in demand for energy in this country was nonetheless fueled by the burning of natural gas, rather than renewable energy. Natural gas emits less carbon dioxide than coal does when it is burned, but it’s still a fossil fuel and still causes significant emissions.

Granted, there’s some slight good news in the new report, in that as renewables and natural gas have grown, coal has a smaller share of the energy pie overall.

Yet the fact that it’s still growing strongly contradicts what scientists have said about what’s needed to curb climate warming. In a major report last year the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global emissions would have to be cut nearly in half, by 2030, to preserve a chance of holding the planet’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

That would require extremely fast annual reductions in emissions — but instead, the world is still marking record highs.

[Read more here]

A couple of years ago, I thought that global emissions had peaked.  Nope.  Nowhere near. 

We are not doing enough.  Catastrophic climate change is already beginning.  And we still defer to denialists and profits.

We need to do more:

• No more coal power stations, anywhere, ever again.  And if a country plans more, we need to persuade them with carrots and sticks to instead build renewables with storage.  And perhaps a loan scheme funded by rich countries for developing countries for renewables plus storage.
• We need active programs to close down existing coal power stations in developed countries.  Right now, even though wind and solar are cheaper than coal, that transition isn't happening fast enough.
• We need subsidies to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles (EVs).  EVs will be price compatible with with ICEVs by the mid 2020s, so perhaps we could start with a cashback if you buy a new EV of $8000, falling by $1000 each year till it reaches zero.  Even if 100% of new car sales are electric, it could still take more than a decade before the whole car fleet is.  The sooner we start the better.
• We need to eliminate all subsidies for fossil fuels.
• Each country must introduce a carbon price.  The best would be a carbon tax, returned by way of a monthly dividend to all residents, and applied to all imports from countries which do not have a carbon tax.

Will the world act?  Will politicians stop mouthing platitudes about it and do something?  We took just a decade to get to the Moon.  If we wanted to, we could slash global CO2 emissions by more than third by 2030 (5% compound per year), just 11 years away.  But we have to want it.  And not piously prate.

Act.  Now.  Or we face catastrophe.