EU countries already hitting some of their sustainable energy targets for 2030
journals.plos.org
journals.plos.org
Surprised not to see France on this list with all their nuclear power, though from glancing at this they seem to be using some aggregated measure instead of just CO2 which probably makes it much more complicated.
> The output of Finland's newest nuclear power facility, Olkiluoto 3, has been significantly cut back because electricity has become too cheap, according to the plant's owner, Teollisuuden Voima (TVO).
> "Electricity production must also be profitable for nuclear power plants, and when the price is particularly low, there may be situations where output is limited," TVO communications manager, Johanna Aho, said.
> Early on Wednesday the market price for electricity dropped below zero cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and for hours after that the price was only 0.3 cents per kWh at its highest, according to the country's grid operator, Fingrid.
> The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor in Eurajoki, southwest Finland, started regular electricity production in mid-April, about 14 years behind schedule.
> Generally, the amount of electricity generated in Finland is regulated by increasing or decreasing the amount of hydroelectric power that is used. However, due to flood conditions in northern Finland, reducing hydroelectric-generated electricity is challenging at the moment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653220 ("HN: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market")
https://yle.fi/a/74-20032375 ("Finnish nuclear plant throttles production as electricity price plunges")
https://elering.ee/en/elering-and-fingrid-launch-joint-activ... ("Elering and Fingrid launch joint activities for construction of EstLink 3")
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/EE?wind=false&solar=fal... ("Electricity Maps: Estonia")
To me, that says Estonia is among the closest to reaching the targets. How do you read it?
Another quote in the paper says something similar:
> the group of countries that came closest to the 2030 target in 2021, apart from the three Scandinavian countries, includes Estonia, Austria, and Slovenia
I interpreted it as the smallest distance travelled towards the goals in comparison the the countries in the following sentence which have made most progress.
Now I'm not sure what it means. If other countries have made more progress over the last decade, how can the countries listed with Estonia be closer to their goals?
[1] https://aemo.com.au/Energy-systems/Electricity/National-Elec...
[2] https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/fossil-fuel-subsidi...
Ofcourse transmission lines might be a bottleneck.
In UK many windfarms wait for years to be connected to the grid as locals protest power pylons 'blighting the landscape'.
The subsidies for coal generation are necessary and not a reflection of Australia having a growing need for greater coal production (it does not, consumption is trending lower year on year)[1], despite the lower coal-power generation over the 21-22 period[2], energy output has risen by 1% (primarily to service exports).[2]
Currently Australia is no where near the point of having that wonderful luxury problem of solar/renewable inputs tipping the balance to shut down coal production. Stating as such is merely regurgitating coal-industry propaganda. Rather, Australia is adequately planning for such a transition by significantly investing in battery technology. In the meantime current battery technology already allows Australia to burn less coal while simultaneously resolving coal's supply issues.
The reason why you don't see noteworthy subsidies against battery technology is two fold: they are a fraction of the cost and they pay themselves off relatively quickly. Coal doesn't feature either of these benefits, and must be propped up by tax payers. Due to the small cost, Australian states are implementing large battery schemes without federal subsidies, then growing these when they generate a profit.
To use an example: The South Australian "Big Battery" cost $200M, in a single year alone (2019) it saved consumers $116 million.
[1] https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-stat...
[2] https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-stat...
Last time I ventured into the Tesla subreddit, people were talking about 20 years. That's terrible.
15k is much more reasonable.
for example, inverters: if your solar installation costs 2 dollars a watt all told, it makes sense to spend an extra hundred bucks on a more efficient inverter if it squeezes 300 more watts out of the panels, but not if the solar installation costs 20 cents a watt. (and maybe you can run some 24-volt dc wiring instead of stepping it up to 120—or put together a constant-current system instead of a constant-voltage one, so the voltage drop in the wires doesn't have to stay within a narrow tolerance.)
or packaging: the glass now costs significantly more than the cells do, and the frames are expensive too—could you make do by gluing the cells to thin polycarbonate, like a compact disc, instead of to glass? even if it cut into longevity
and maybe you can do a rooftop installation of a lightweight installation with a long pole with a hook on the end, or something, instead of having a guy climb up on the roof with a ladder—potentially falling off and dying, which is both a human tragedy and an insurance cost
or hang the cells vertically under the eaves on the east or west side of the house, like wind chimes: no midday sun, and a significantly diminished capacity factor when you do get sun, but also no holes drilled in the roof, no rigid frames, no rain, and no hailstones
Source, Australian government via: https://www.energy.gov.au/solar/switch-solar-power/solar-hou...
Coal is already dead based on current trajectories, the body just hasn’t hit the floor yet.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/11/22/former-coal-plant-big...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/end-of-co...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-26/how-austr...
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/20/agl-b...
https://www.energy-storage.news/australias-national-cefc-inv...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2023/07/18/the-us-is-...
> Spanish power prices have tumbled in February to a fraction of the price in neighboring France as record wind and solar power generation in Spain has triggered an extreme slump in prices.
> Day-ahead electricity prices for Thursday settled at just $5.20 (4.80 euros) per megawatt-hour (MWh) in Spain, compared to as much as $68.86 (63.59 euros) per MWh for France, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. France relies mostly on its vast domestic nuclear power generation for most of its electricity needs and is typically a net exporter of electricity to neighboring countries.
> But as Spain’s wind and solar power generation hit new records early this year, Spain has been exporting electricity since February 21, according to grid data cited by Bloomberg. Spain is currently selling electricity even to France.
> Solar and wind power generation in Spain is expected to have hit a record high this month and high output is set to continue into March, per Bloomberg models.
> Cheap power prices have hurt the profits of Spanish utilities but they have been a boon to consumers as retail prices have reflected lower wholesale electricity prices.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/ES?wind=false&solar=fal... ("Electricity Maps: Spain")
Obviously electricity isn't anywhere close to a free market, but it sometimes pretends to be one.
Also transmission costs are significantly larger than production costs in most markets.
Like France, often cited as the the world leader, with around 70% of its generated electricity coming from nuclear. Or Belgium, with around 50%, or Bulgaria around 30%, or Czechia around 40%, Finland around 35%, Hungary around 50%, Slovakia around 60%, Slovenia around 40%, Sweden around 30%, Switzerland around 35%...
Compared to Australia's one nuclear power, which isn't even being used to generate power, or the US' 18%, or UK's 14%, or Canada's 13%.
If you look at : https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
and look for 1 year as the time period then the places with low emissions from electricity either have lots of hydro, import power or are nuclear powered.
As yet there does not yet appear to be a single place in the world that uses solar and wind and has low emissions for electricity.
Germany's emissions given the Energiewende and the huge cost of that are particularly noteworthy.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/AU-SA?wind=false&solar=... ("Electricity Maps: South Australia")
https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=all&interval=1M&vie... ("OpenNEM: South Australia")
https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-to-reach-100-pct... ("South Australia, the state with a world-leading average share of renewable energy of more than 71.5 per cent in its grid, is expected to reach “net” 100 per cent renewables within four years, according to the state’s transmission company.")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_South_Australia
I am somewhat disappointed you aren't aware, as an Australian.
> The first and only EPR under construction in France is Flamanville-3, a project led by EDF as developer, constructor, owner and operator. This project is an industrial failure with endless delays and substantial cost overruns observed. When the construction of this reactor started in 2007, its commissioning was scheduled for 2012 at a cost of around €4 billion. In 2022, Flamanville-3 is still not operational and it will not be before 2023 – at least an 11-year delay on a five-year project. Its cost has spiraled to more than €20 billion, a multiplication by a factor five compared to the cost estimate when decision was taken. As a result, the generation cost of Flamanville-3 is now estimated at €115-125/MWh. Explanations provided blame for unpreparedness, incorrect technical references and insufficient detailed studies as well as the loss of competences in the French nuclear industry. The absence of skills maintenance, or “learning by doing”, has proven particularly problematic for the quality of welds – requiring repairs, notably.
https://www.renewable-ei.org/en/activities/column/REupdate/2...
As the population of Canada grows past the point that the hydro projects provide nearly all electricity, I expect them to start burning more and more natural gas.
Initially this will show as New York state using more natural gas since Canada produces a huge amount of the total power there.
It's also most expensive.
The only thing more expensive than nuclear — in these stats at least — is small-scale solar installations.
Btw, this widespread (but wrong) belief that nuclear is cheap stems from the fact that a lot of countries heavily subsidized their nuclear industry in order to gain know-how and/or materials for atomic weapon production. It's not even cost-covering at current energy prices without those subsidies.
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/whats-lifespan-nuclear-re...
And fund the plants from budget, not commercial debt.
> "Governments can borrow much more cheaply that private companies and that lower cost of borrowing can drastically reduce the ultimate cost. Hinkley Point C would have been roughly half the cost if the government had been borrowing the money to build it at 2%, rather than EDF's cost of capital, which was 9%."
Having governments finance the plants does not reduce the cost, it is a subsidy transferring the risk to the government with the taxpayers being on the hook instead of the banks.
The cost stemming from the project risk will not be realized until the construction goes over budget or fails, at which time the difference between the market rate and the government rate is realized by the tax payers.
What all this means is that the project's risk and cost is constant. You only transfer who pays for it. The public or the owner.
With Hinkley Point C looking to cost even more than €160/MWh over 35 years strike price they got that territory is being entered with bitter negotiations at the highest political level.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/16/edf-hinkley-...
40, most were build for 40.
>Having governments finance the plants does not reduce the cost, it is a subsidy transferring the risk to the government with the taxpayers being on the hook instead of the banks.
There's no "transferring the risk", energy safety is as much responsibility of the government as everyone else. Taxpayers are on the hook for everything government does, it makes as much sense as buying police cars from a budget.
If the power plant fails, everyone loses due to lack of power. The magical idea that some kind of failure of power plant does not affect every citizen, but only shareholders is just not true.
>With Hinkley Point C looking to cost even more than €160/MWh over 35 years that territory is being entered with bitter negotiations at the highest political level.
Which comes from financing.
This is not true, the alternative to nuclear power is being built today without subsidies or government involvement.
There is a transferring of the risk. For the alternative the government is not on the hook. I.e. there is no unrealized cost.
We can put it into concrete terms:
Who pays when something like Nukegate [1] or Hanhikivi [2] happens if the government finances the plant?
The taxpayers.
Who pays when Ørsted realizes that the contracts signed during ZIRP [3] no longer make business sense to pursue?
Ørsted.
If Ørsted were to go bankrupt due to the project, like Areva and Olkiluoto 3, who pays?
The banks.
The difference between the market rate and the government rate is who pays when the project goes belly up. Trying to fudge the numbers like you are doing is only a ploy to politically sell a project which does not economically make sense.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukegate_scandal
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
[3]: https://us.orsted.com/news-archive/2023/10/orsted-ceases-dev...
I'll distill all those questions into one: who pays to make sure that despite all potential and real failures the venture is profitable? Taxpayers. That's why those rates are so high, you're paying upfront for that possibility. Getting all the downsides and zero upsides.
It's like getting extended warranty on a toaster or any item you can easily buy ten of. The expected value is strictly negative.
Dealing with insurance is not something government should be doing anytime; it's way too big for that.
You want to splurge tax payer money on a dead-end technology when the alternative delivers today.
It's just not worth the hassle.
Yep. It's sad-funny — they had to shut down reactors because the cooling water was getting too hot. To be fair this seems to be environmental regulations and not the reactors themselves, but then again the water is from rivers and at some point you really grill the river.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Heatwave-forces-...
It's all over bar the shouting for nuclear at this point. But granted, the shouting level seems to be going up not down. You would think NuScale going broke would damper the enthusiasm but no, Dutton's response to that seems to be to shout louder.
As for the OP claim Australia needs coal - South Australia has no coal. It's one of the few places in Australia that isn't build on coal seams. Consequently South Australia is now at 70% renewables, higher than any other OECD place on the planet with a substantial population (including other Australia states). That's 70% average over a year, not peak. Without coal. So much for "needing it".
The UK is building/planning a lot of natgas peaker plants at the moment, seemingly without anyone realising. One I read about is limited (for emissions reasons) to 240hours/10 days operation per year, which suggests that the price of power when renewables aren't going is going to be extremely high to make it profitable to build a plant that only runs 3% of the time.
It's probably fine, as the cost of renewable electricity is now lower than the fuel cost (aka the variable cost) of these plants.
In a lot of places, it's now cheaper to run a gas plant with renewables than without, as the build costs of the renewables is lower than the cost of the fuel they prevent to get burned.
I'm sure they'll never use it for wrongdoings... but also they probably will.
It's a way to leverage the loads in certain areas but it's dreadful.
But yep. Solar is great for Australian homes. I still think it's weird that we had to solve electricity at the home level though..
this presupposes that the energy mix is changing because of costly government subsidies, and if that presupposition were correct, it would be a very reasonable comment
but that's not what's happening. countries aren't hitting their targets because the local government subsidies are more successful than expected; they're doing it because renewable energy (and, in some cases, energy efficiency improvements) is cheaper than fossil fuel in most of europe now, and has been for several years now, so companies and individuals invest in renewable energy instead of fossil-fuel production capacity, even without local government incentives
this is primarily because of capitalism in the people's republic of china, strongly supported, of course, by the so-called communist party of china. past subsidies in some european countries and the usa are of course also historically important
it would be easy to misunderstand that the chinese government is subsidizing the european energy transition, so that as europe switches over to renewables, it will cost the chinese government larger and larger amounts of money until finally they take measures to stem the flood. but that is not the case; the chinese renewable energy producers are profitable on their own terms. there was a price-fixing cartel announced at davos in 02019, which kept the price of solar panels at about €0.20 per peak watt of low-cost panels from the end of 02018 to the end of 02022 (or €0.29 for mainstream higher-efficiency panels). if we believe https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... that price has now fallen to €0.09 per peak watt for low-cost panel modules, €0.14 per peak watt for mainstream, so the cartel has evidently fallen apart; i infer that government support was helpful for holding it together for so long, but presumably at the end the panel producers' gross profit margins were close to 50%, like copyright-mafiaa rentiers. such high profit margins create enormous temptations to undercut other cartel members to win market share, so cartels in markets rapidly climbing up the experience curve tend to be very unstable
(wind turbine prices have also been falling, but the available wind resource is much smaller, and exploiting it is more often politically infeasible.)
suppose you can borrow money at 4% apr to build solar farms, and you somehow manage to keep the total cost of building a plant (inverters, cables, installation, etc.) to twice the panel costs, which has been roughly the historical average (https://ratedpower.com/blog/solar-farm-costs/), and you manage to site the plant somewhere with a capacity factor of 16%—not the 29% california gets, nor the 10% maine and germany get (china too for some reason!), but somewhere in between. €0.09 per peak watt becomes €0.18 per peak watt and €1.13 per average watt, and at that 4% apr, each average watt costs you €0.045 per year in interest. but an average watt is 8.77 kilowatt hours, because a year is about 8770 hours
so that's €0.0051 per kilowatt hour
fossil-fuel power usually costs around €0.03 per kilowatt hour, 500% more. it costs even more when it's being burned in an inefficient mobile internal-combustion engine. it can't compete, except where it's the only option. it can't even compete in germany, much less in india, perú, tunisia, and indonesia
unlike wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels scale down very well; you can get a 200-watt-peak panel. this greatly limits the options incumbent utility companies have to protect themselves from competition from this radical threat; if they try to keep their prices high to pay off the debt they owe on their coal and oil plants, many of their customers will install local generation capacity, reducing their customer base to one even less able to pay off the large fixed costs—the much-feared 'utility death spiral', a phenomenon which so far has not materialized
this is also why african, asian, and american countries with no emissions targets won't just replace european consumption of fossil fuels
it is difficult to overstate the importance of this change for human economic development. the last time the price of energy dropped so much was sometime in the early 19th century, and energy is still profoundly important to the economy, despite the migration of heavy industry away from rich countries. how will this near-order-of-magnitude reduction in the cost of energy affect the relative prices of goods and the possibilities for human development? how will it alter geopolitics?
and given that the price has been falling like this for 15 years (solarserver listed a price of €2.17 per peak watt in may 02009, 24× higher than today, an average halving time of about 3.2 years—the cartel bubble merely paused progress along the trajectory to which the price has now returned) it's likely that it's not done falling yet
Yet they are.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewab...
Edit: Misread the post I was replying to but can’t delete it now. The graph is largely in agreeance with what OP is saying
That's why in UK we have banned construction of Wind Turbines on land, we have banned construction of solar panels on land of 'potential agricultural value', which is basically anything except mountainous terrain.
We have blocked construction of a win farm in South England due to 'potential noise pollution and congestion'. And we give subsidies to the DRAX power plant that 'sustainably' burns the amazon rainforest that was turned into woodchips and shipping 9000 miles to get there.
I have entirely lost faith in the anglo-speaking west as a force for good and progress in this matter.
I think that ban has more to do with the current party of government being the Conservative Party, who like to imagine the natural state of the whole UK being just like the gardens of a Victorian era country house. For the sake of everyone not from the UK, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harlaxton_Manor_-_Univers...
> I have entirely lost faith in the anglo-speaking west as a force for good and progress in this matter.
You're not alone. Weirdly, even it seems that even Conservative MPs don't have much faith in the Conservative Party right now.
I would be happy if that’s what they said, but they campaign on economic growth and investment and then block every attempt to build anything with investment.
Zero "zero-calories" should short up down their stmilycaly...? :think(metro emoji...)...
Good luck....
Are we really naïve enough to think that African and Asian countries won't just replace our consumption of fossil fuels?
Pretty sure none of these countries have emissions targets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_air_pollu...
Especially in countries without any infrastructure.
If the centralized power grid is poor quality (think South Africa) or there is poor quality central government, yes.
Show me a solar + batteries facility that operates 24x365 at sub 0.05 USD/kWh and I'll concede they're cheaper, but you can't because no such facility exists.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...
If you average the low and high estimate, onshore wind is almost exactly 50USD/MWh, and nothing else is that cheap.
(Yes, you said batteries and 24×365. But the "24×365 capable" fossil sources are nowhere near 50USD/MWh either. And power consumption is not flat across days, the week, and seasons. Particularly solar can be predicted and worked with in adjusting load to match availability.)
Solar and wind with batteries are in the range of $200-500/MWh.
Nice try moving the goal posts though.
Second, natural gas plants don't operate 24x365; the figures I see say 27%(!) to 71%. Even nuclear varies between low 70s and low 80s percentages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor
Third, even if batteries were as expensive as you think, PV is cheaper than the running cost of a fossil fuel plant, so all the poor countries would still want to install them even if they also used natural gas at night, and that's still a win-win over using natural gas 24/7.
Fourth, given I can't use the statista.com link without an account:
> Today the LCOE of hybrid PV-battery systems ranges from 5.24 to 19.72 €Cent /kWh. This wide cost range is due to the large price difference of the various battery systems.
- https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-o...
Which is US$ 56/MWh to US$ 197.2/MWh at current exchange rates.
For comparison, €500/MWh would be the cost of building a storage system from the kinds of battery packs supermarkets around here sell for use in off-grid caravans, and then assuming they last exactly 1000 cycles before being discarded entirely.
This is because gas plants are commonly used as peaking power plants because they can respond to load changes very quickly; cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant "Peaker plants are generally gas turbines or gas engines that burn natural gas. A few burn biogas or petroleum-derived liquids, […]"
A nuclear power plant is the diametral opposite, it's slow as a behemoth to change output power — it's essentially required to run at those high capacity factors.
(That said, gas power plants designed and built as peaker plants may not in fact even be able to run 24×365 since they're not engineered for that; planning for frequent idle or shutdown cycles certainly eases some constraints.)
Either way discussing a "$50/MWh 24x365" requirement is not even wrong, just 無.
Also, https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april... page 5. Onshore wind plus storage is $42 … $114. Combined cycle gas is $39 … $101, with a midpoint at $62 with "black" gas and fully depreciated, i.e. powerplant costs not included.
Now you can provide two sources to pull even.
In Australia I can right now install a home solar battery system that supplies power at about USD$0.13 when amortised over 10 years. I hear the USA isn't efficient at solar installations as Australia, but you will get there.
But the former isn’t true. Renewables are really cheap.
Worse off nations should benefit from the glut of cheaper panels from companies fighting to stay afloat, that are far cheaper than continuing to buy oil.
We should all strive to do what we can, regardless of what others do.
Setting an example and making investments eventually trickles down abroad with technologies being cheaper, with foreign companies being pushed by genuine or PR reasons to make investments on being greener in those countries etc.
You made up your mind and didn't even bother checking.
But I'll leave you with that. Solar gives 14'000 Iraqis job nowadays and villages fully solar powered are more and more common [1].
Chad too, which you mention, has multiple solar projects[2].
None of this would've happened without the rest of the world making important investments and making the technology cheap.
Setting examples and doing the right thing is morally important regardless of what others do. That still stands. And as an European I much hope for cleaner air, less smog, less gas heaters, etc.
It doesn't make sense to go the other way and have tens of thousands die each year because "it's cheaper if we use fossils".
As a society we have to move forwards and stop thinking it's all about the individual and economical stats.
Economical stats go up and we're as miserable and lonely and mentally unstable as we've ever been. We may at least leave a slightly cleaner and healthier world.
[1]https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231102-iraq-inches-t...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27jermaya_Solar_Power_Stat...
And everyone will be poorer. It's already happening in Europe. Coming from the tech world you probably don't notice because you are relatively wealthy. But your neighbors might.
And we have much bigger moral issues than energy...
I don't think they are any poorer because of that.
You need solid numbers and facts.
Don't forget Europe imports fossils at a high price and it makes us weak and dependent on geopolitics (see Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effects on our bills).
These countries may have some small successful projects, but as a whole, most of their citizens are burning whatever they can get their hands on to stay alive, and living in garbage piles. They're not doing higher-level thinking about large-scale green energy projects because they're still in basic human survival mode, and they're being kept there by oppressive dictators and regimes.
It is a crutch of Western society, and a saccharine statement of moral superiority, that we feel we must make the world a better place for everyone. We should demand the same effort from every other country on the planet.
If we keep hand-holding these countries, giving them access to cheaper infrastructure and technology while turning a blind eye to their subversion of Western society, their oppressive regimes and refusing to hold them accountable for their impact on the planet, then we will condemn them to the pitiful state they're in by assuming they can't do any better - while we prostrate ourselves doing everything we possibly can, and yet never reaching the goals we set.
Even if you ignore per capita, just North America/Europe/Japan/Australia/NZ combined it represents 40% of pollution in the world, despite, combined, not even being 20% of the population.
We will go broke trying to slash emissions while the rest of the world uses cheap energy to fuel their economic growth. The days of the US being a positive example of, well, anything are rapidly diminishing.
Once everyone in America started driving cars, that didn't drive a resurgence in the use of horses for transportation in Africa.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewab...
North American and European CO2 emissions are decreasing, but world wide emissions are constant. The rest of the world doesn't care, we're only bankrupting ourselves in a futile struggle.
If you really want to reduce atmospheric CO2 the only solution is massive sequestration or military force to stop the third world from burning fossil fuels.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?time=1941..latest&f...
Here's a better link:
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?time=1941..latest&f...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6016768/
Edit: that being said I do like forests, not because of the CO2 reduction, but because they're nice places.
That's an absurd cope.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-sol....
In the meantime, they're building more of everything else, too.
So… a mixed bag, really. There's good stuff and bad there, on the energy front.
Simply put they're getting poorer and using fewer resources as a result.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...
Africa is steadily increasing its energy consumption actually
https://www.statista.com/statistics/265590/primary-energy-co....
> Simply put they're getting poorer and using fewer resources as a result.
Or energy efficiency is also now cost effective. LEDs are the laziest and most obvious example that come to mind. But even any appliance you buy today has less power consumption due to inexorable march of technological progress.
This is so hypocritical it is breathtaking! Tiny UK alone has, historically, produced more CO2 that all of Africa has done so far!
Furthermore, USA & West perceives themselves to be leaders in technology and innovation. Cleantech was a perfect opportunity to sell world-leading products to the rest of the world, and make bank. Instead we dithered and delayed, missed the opportunity, and now African leaders are making fun of us, "Why do you come to our country only to complain about China? That's all we hear from you!'
500GW end of 2023. 1TW in 3 years is their current goal.
That's wrong. I'm not sure why I'm replying as truth seems be to first casualty in culture wars, but the only two that matter in that list are China and India due to their population.
China: President Xi announced that China would reach its carbon emissions peak before 2030 and become “carbon neutral” before 2060. https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/the-carbon-brief-profile...
India: Reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by at least 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. Achieve the target of net zero by 2070. https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/assessing...
Most countries have announced feel good emissions targets. It's a great way to generate political feel good's, and talk is cheap.