And China isn't slowing down. Coal is incredibly cheap when there's no carbon tax or emission standards. One of the many reasons it's cheaper to manufacture in China and why North Americans and Europeans can't compete.
Time to add tariffs on goods produced by states who made the decision of going all-in on polluting power generation, and potentially apply immigration quotas to citizens of these countries.
Contrast this with Australia that is a fully developed economy, has the easiest location to install and generate solar, has tons of uranium in the ground that it doesn't have a single reactor to use, and still burns and ships coal to act as an enabler to other coal burning nations.
And yet their emissions are growing at an out of control pace [0].
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/us-leads-greenhouse-gas-emis...
In 10 years will this be the case? Nuclear takes a long time to bring online, they've at least got the process in motion and reasons to be polluting right now. Polluters like Australia don't and that's my point.
Or maybe it'd be better that China stops producing renewable technologies for the rest of the world? One big area I see them improving is with use of electric vehicles. Can't do EV's if your grid can't supply the energy. Should they push gas and diesel vehicles instead for the next decade or two?
I don't understand the dichotomy here. Is the argument that China's production of solar panels is a primary driver of China's pollution and thus cutting pollution in China would significantly hamper their ability to produce PV for the world? That seems dubious to me if I understand it correctly?
Let's make it easy then: Without coal as a large % of base load they'd have to shut down a good amount of their manufacturing and focus on putting less EV's on the road until they could replace the base load lost from shutting off all their coal production. China is #10 on the list of natural gas reserves, far below what the US or Russia has. At their current consumption they are anticipated to run out in a little over 20 years. I do not think it is a viable strategy to throw tons of natural gas online and rely on Russia when it runs out.
Literally nothing the Chinese do with energy policy right now will appease the west. If they put in more hydro for wind/PV storage western press would print headlines about how the big bad CCP flooded over some villages and are destroying their environment.
Serious development and commercialization of small modular nuclear reactors as an alternative to coal would probably do the trick.
And it's still well below Japan in per capita emission. Japan is quite an advanced green economy.
I don't think any reason to put China front and center in this discussion "who should start closing coal power plant".
Edit:
> Focusing on per-capita data inevitably leads to whataboutism
Well, energy usage is a key indicator of human wellbeing. I see no reason this leads to whataboutism. It's a key part of the discussion. Without this, humans are not going to unit in full strength.
> that's exactly the narrative the CCP wants to push!
CCP lifted 600MM+ people out of poverty. I guess they can make a few correct statement, right?
> But when looking at emissions over time, it becomes pretty obvious that some countries are working hard doing their parts while some others are simply polluting at an accelerating pace.
Yes, we can clearly see that China committed to carbon neutral at the critical juncture of economy development [1], and the only large developing country. And we are waiting India [2]. Meanwhile, despite enjoying the most from the carbon emission industry in 20 century, the advanced & developed country continuously insist on equal responsibility for all nations. It's like I eat most of the lunch, and grow so big, now I say that everyone on the table should cut their food consumption by certain percentage... Not fair.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2021/03/08/chi...
[2] https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/climate-change/is-india-...
I upvoted you but I didn't dunk on Japan because they do have nuclear energy and are a resource poor nation. They are also the only nation to have legitimate concerns over nuclear technology for reasons I shouldn't have to explain.
>Meanwhile, despite enjoying the most from the carbon emission industry in 20 century, the advanced & developed country continuously insist on equal responsibility for all nations.
This is the core point! I'm making the case that there's a reason they are emitting lots of carbon right now, and unlike many other nations that don't have a reason nor a plan to get off carbon, they do have one. China was practically an agrarian society up until the 1980's, the west squandered a 200 year carbon-burning head start and is painting them as the bad guys.
For how long?
> I don't think any reason to put China front and center in this discussion "who should start closing coal power plant".
Focusing on per-capita data inevitably leads to whataboutism, and that's exactly the narrative the CCP wants to push! But when looking at emissions over time, it becomes pretty obvious that some countries are working hard doing their parts while some others are simply polluting at an accelerating pace.
No matter how many UN councils vote to agree on this, we both know it's not true.
If you do that then the price of Solar PV will skyrocket back up. The key reason we've seen Solar PV prices plummet is because we've seen an increasing amount of manufacturing move to China, now 80% of solar PV are manufactured their.
It takes a tremendous amount of resources and energy to make solar pv and the only way to do it cheaply is to do it someplace that doesn't mind burning lots of coal to extract and process the necessary resources to build them.
Though to be fair, high tariffs that reduced Chinese production would hurt the global economy, which is the only demonstrated method we've seen to reduce emissions. This could be the best path way to improving emissions, but I suspect many people would be unhappy with consequences.
Seems like it might make sense to me.
> and potentially apply immigration quotas to citizens of these countries.
Um, what does this have to do with solving the problem at hand?
This is why I think a carbon tax with border adjustment would be pretty awesome. The border adjustment is the bit that levels the economic playing field between polluting and clean countries.
I thought that Trump was all about building more coal? Didn't it work out?
It maybe slowed down decommission of existing power plants, but nobody would build a coal power plant today from scratch in the west. These things last for a generation, while an administration 8 years at most.
Sure, let's have a tariff on goods made in a country, that scales proportionately to the per-capita CO2 emissions in it.
The United States would be one of the most heavily tariffed countries in the world, if we go down that road. China would be... Middle of the pack.
Again the obsession over per capita data, which totally obscure the fact that the US per capita emissions have been in a constant decline over the last 20 years while China's have been growing at an uncontrolled pace.
Which behavior should we incentivize, unrestrained pollution because they "aren't THE worst yet" or hard work curbing emissions?
I don't care about 'trying' or 'trends'. I care about current results. That's the behaviour we should incentivize. Results. Not 'projected results maybe 20 years from now.'
Oh, and by the way, China's per-capita emissions peaked in ~2013, and have been ~slowly declining since then. [1] If current trends continue without any change, it's going to take another 24 years for the US to hit their level of emissions. [2]
It's odd that whenever people grouse about China's emissions, they never make note of either of those two facts...
- Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%)
- A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%)
Meanwhile for the same period China has had
- a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%)
- 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007
Clearly one is not like the other! One of them achieved significant results.
I really should not have to explain on this forum that when you multiply two numbers together, the values of both multipliers matter. Seven times nearly-nothing is not very much. Point-seven times a lot is... Still a lot. It's basic arithmetic.
If you don't want to take per-capita emissions into account, and want to look at absolute numbers, then the US has an even smaller carbon budget to work with - and its way exceeding it.
But okay, let's look at per-capita development times quality of life, instead. (China is ~15% behind the US on the latter - does that mean that its per-capita budget should be dropped by a comparative 15%? It's still doing well by that metric.)
You must realize that development is only possible because of access to energy, services, and material goods. Cut the energy, transportation, and services available to the average American by a factor of 3, as a proxy for bringing it's emissions profile down to China's, and tell me - what will happen to its quality of life?
(My prediction is - a sharp decline, followed by a bloody revolution.)
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
Germany is absolutely a great example, even if it somehow became the target for the weird cadre of nuclear boosters.
France is sending around 2 to 4 GW of electricity (so mostly nuclear) to Germany all the time, "except" when there is plenty of wind, then France is buying for a really cheap price (sometimes negative) what Germany can't use. See https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/les-echanges-commerciaux-...
2 to 4 GW is roughly 2 to 4 nuclear reactors at 100%, so one/two nuclear powerplants "on an average usage".
You can't say that you exited nuclear (or any other kind of energy) when you're massively, and really often, importing electricity from this source from across the borders.
And your graph is pretty clear. Germany didn't "removed fossil fuel", they replaced around 100GW of coal with 50GW of natural gas + renewable. To me natural gas is still a fossil fuel (with a lighter co2 impact than coal indeed).
And in the end the result is https://www.electricitymap.org/map 5 to 10x more CO² impact than France per kwh, even with 2x the nuclear plants setup in France (60GW of nuclear in France against 60GW of wind turbines and 60GW of solar panels in Germany).
I do wonder what happens in case there is no wind and no sun all over Europe and the demand is higher than the supply. It's probably very unlikely to happen but then countries will prioritize their own citizens (as we saw now during the covid crisis) and then we could have blackouts. I assume scenario's like these have been researched but I don't follow this subject, maybe someone else here knows?
Things change and over the span of 10-20 years, things can change dramatically. The life span of many of these decisions is 30 years or more.
Germany is also a net exporter of electricity and exported 13.7Twh more than it imported from France.
So when you have spikes of renewable productions (a lot of wind and a lot of sun) Germany sells it to "everyone around" at a really cheap price. Which means that on a yearly average Germany indeed exported a lot of cheap renewable electricity to everyone.
Now try to guess what is happening when everyone starts to do what Germany is doing for close to 20 years now ?
I am not a huge fan of Germany's energy policy myself, I see it as misguided giving up nuclear first and coal second.
BUT, if everyone built out renewables like crazy, it would create a huge market for storage or electrolysis systems.
What will happen is that people will learn to build an energy system that works well with this situation.
Which will likely mean things like industrial plants that shut down when electricity is scarce and get payed for that by the grid operator, because that's cheaper than having a lot of storage. It will mean new industries will be built by using excess renewables (likely hydrogen will be such an industry). I'm excited to see that happen.
France is also leaning rather heavily on the capital expenditures it made on nuclear power in the 80s. Unfortunately its gonna be in for a whopping bill when its plants start aging out in 2025: https://www.france24.com/en/20170710-france-hulot-could-clos...
Germany, OTOH, will be able to coast on what it's already built in the next 10 years while the rest of Europe plays catch up.
Wind turbines lifespan is around 25 years (some 30 years), mostly limited by structural and physical issues. You can't reinstall a new wind turbine on top of an old one (the concrete base is also fragilized and new turbines are often way bigger than old ones).
Solar panels indeed have a way better lifespan and recent ones stay efficient even after decades of use.
So one question now: why is Germany building and importing so much natural gaz (~400g of CO²/kwh, it's around 10 for renewable/nuclear) if their renewable plan is working so well ?
I presume they will start scaling down natural gas plants at some point, but they're clearly aiming to shut down nuclear and lignite plants first.
Coping with increased electricity demand and switching off two forms of power generation entirely wasn't going to be quick but it is inevitable.
There is a cost to renewables that most advocates don't factor in - balancing. Most studies use the prevailing market rates for energy to prove that renewables are cheaper than coal or gas however, when renewables aren't providing power, something is and that something has a cost.
This is a cost paid for by consumers though it isn't attributed to the source of the problem - the variable renewable generators.
Similar argument for energy storage. You need storage precisely because renewables are variable and that cost should be factored in to the cost of renewable energy. At the moment, it isn't.
Hence all that electricity imported from, e.g. France in winter. Some people might be under the illusion that this was free but I can assure you I am not.
There's a reason Europe is super keen on country interconnectors. It really helps smooth out production.
Intermittency of renewables really has become the next Y2k. I suppose we can thank a decade of carbon and nuclear lobby fearmongering for that :/
Like Y2K as a problem it receives relatively too much attention relative to the problems it causes. The rolling blackouts germany was promised ~10 years ago never materialized, for instance:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/may/23/germany-...
Batteries and HVDC to your nearest major desert are what I expect to be the solutions.
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...
False. In reality Germany often has a trade surplus with France. See, every country has multiple interconnects, and various areas send and receive power. On the whole, Germany sends more power to France than France sends to Germany. Which makes sense -- France's total power production is far below its peak power demand, and as is the nature of nuclear power, plants are very often offline. But sure, one area of Germany imports from France while another area exports to France...that isn't notable.
You're regurgitating ridiculous pro-nuclear propaganda. Telling that your argument has completely shifted between posts.
"Germany didn't "removed fossil fuel""
Who are you quoting? Further, Germany started their nuclear decommissioning in 2011. Natural gas + coal + lignite is *WAY* below that level now.
>And in the end the result is https://www.electricitymap.org/map 5 to 10x more CO² impact than France per kwh, even with 2x the nuclear plants setup in France (60GW of nuclear in France against 60GW of wind turbines and 60GW of solar panels in Germany).
Germany had a much dirtier power profile before they started decommissioning nuclear reactors. They have a much, much cleaner profile now, even if it still isn't as clean as France's. The "went back to coal" nonsense is ridiculous noise.
EDIT: I would love to know what's going on in the minds of people who downvote comments like this. Just upset with fact and reality?
Source ?
Nuclear is around 90% of Capacity factor in the USA, 75% in Canada, around 70% in France and UK. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Capacity_facto...
So close to 2 to 3x more than wind turbines and solar panels. And roughly the same numbers are other kind of plants (gaz, coal…).
This is a pretty facetious comparison. You install solar knowing that the sun won't shine all the time, and turbines that the wind won't blow. No one installs it expecting 100%. The cost to install is low.
Nuclear, on the other hand, is a massive capital expenditure. When nuclear is down, that is a major problem because you don't overbuild. An unplanned outage can be a disaster.
This whole conversation is a bit rich given that many of France's reactors are nearing EoL and France has no plans on replacing them.
Regardless, I soundly and overwhelmingly debunked the nonsense that Germany "went back to coal" so now it's on with strawmen and shifting goal posts. Such is always the nature of any discussion involving the magical panacea of nuclear.
Germany is not going back to coal, I never said that ;) Germany is indeed planning to phase out coal "by 2035" (lets see how this goes, there is an election going on). Germany is currently building natural gas plants on the other hand. Gaz that is mostly (around 45%) imported from Russia, a nice diplomatic thing they're getting into.
Bullshit. Nuclear died outside of China because it was oversold and an economic calamity. You can't even install nuclear without massive government subsidies (not least a huge liability waiver where the state basically takes on all liability, not done for any other energy source). The cost to build, operate, retrofit and decommission is always massively over the expected, and it has only gotten worse.
There are places where nuclear is by far the best option, and its extreme costs and safety needs are acceptable. There are many others where it just never yielded the promise.
"Germany is not going back to coal, I never said that ;)"
That is the root of this thread that you jumped into, making several seriously wrong claims that you either just shifted goal posts or edited out along the way.
Add in that the latest nat-gas installation in my state from start to finish cost 1/4th the price of our last wind turbine installation, if you compare actual power produced over the year instead of simply comparing max rated production.
That's when I realized that you literally can't have enough wind to replace CO2 producing power and nuclear is the only reasonable answer.
"That's when I realized"
You understand how utterly ridiculous this sounds, right?
"That's when I realized that spacecraft should be made out of aluminum foil"
I based my opinion on real world data, and only real world data could change it. Maybe that sounds ridiculous where you're standing, but I'll never know.
And like my man Richard Feynman would say if he were alive today, p-hacking, cargo culting, and outright fraud are alive and well - endemic in the life or death sciences - and super-saturating the more politicized sciences. Takes 5 minutes to get a rough estimate of something to see if a study is even close to being accurate. Try it. Pick a small wind market in ideal conditions, pick an established utility with public records, and do the work yourself.
The implication here being that air conditioning will be using lots of power? Surely using solar PV for air conditioning is the most obvious pairing out there. It's rarely hot and not sunny.
Did you perhaps confuse wind and solar with nuclear? The design of a nuclear plant is precisely the opposite of what you describe.
You understand they have to take the plant offline to do major maintenance, even refuelling, right? In April, 75% of New England's nuclear power plants were offline, for instance, most unplanned.
When a single plant costs billions of dollars and becomes a significant or overwhelming contributor to an area's power mix, it can be a problem.
A typical nuclear plant isn't designed to be cycled regularly. What you are suggesting is that most nuclear plants are not generating power for more than 50% of the time.
A cursory search of capacity factors will show that this is the opposite of reality. A typical wind or solar installation on average, generates zero power for more than half the time.
Please be a bit serious about what you're saying, you don't have to actually turn of a plant when you need to refuel. If any kind of plant (including hydro) need to be completely turned off for maintenance its really because you had a major design flaw.
Here's a nuclear industry blog post explaining the practice: http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2012/05/what-happens-dur...
It's remarkable how much power these plants generate with a relatively small footprint.
Wind speeds are actually greatest around sunrise and sunset, which corresponds more or less with peak energy demand.
No, wind at night!
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2...
Coal mining is dangerous/destructive, burning coal is poisoning the oceans and has killed many, many people. For example, an estimate is that over 20,000 deaths are caused per year due to burning coal in Europe. I am not sure how many of these deaths Germany is exporting every year to countries downwind, but it isn't zero: https://news.mongabay.com/2013/06/burning-coal-responsible-f...
A NASA estimate is that the use of nuclear power has saved approximately 1.8 million lives in the years 1971-2009:
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-...
Of course the above is just the immediate damage from coal - future generations will have to live with the effects of all that CO2 being added to the atmosphere from Germany burning lignite and hard coal to produce ~130 TWh of power. How many deaths will come from that? (Burning natural gas produces less CO2 than burning coal, but the production and distribution of natural gas leads to enough losses to the atmosphere, it is estimated the climate impact might be similar to coal.)
Choosing to eliminate nuclear power when you are still burning fossil fuels is truly a horrible decision.
For comparison, 1 person died from radiation exposure after Fukushima. https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher...
A small group of well meaning "activists" have cost many lives bc they did not look at the data.
the weird cadre of nuclear boosters
Sure from a Ukrainian point of view NSII sucks. But it isn’t even close to an existential thing for Germany. The gas dependency is temporary (<15 years) and could also be filled by US LNG. Which is why the US is against NSII
So yeah from a geopolitical point of view this is all very interesting. From an ecological point of view the net impact is close to zero
Until they reach the lower limit with all the gas plants deployed, then they'll really have to think again about how they will definitely remove those plants.
Gas is really the best backup for renewable. It's cheap (for now), really adjustable (perfect for the renewable intermittence, on the contrary of nuclear), easy to deploy (not that easy with nuclear plants). The only issue is that it still emits a lot of CO²… and that you strongly depend on other countries for your energy (gas cannot be store as easily as uranium for example).
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2021/04/23/china-wil...
No idea why this gets repeated here so often, but this statement is simply wrong.
From 2013 to 2020 nuclear as share of Germany's energy mix went from 17% to 13%. https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&...
During the same time, coal went from 45% to 23%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany
So yes, nuclear is 4% lower, but coal is 22% lower.
But they changed direction - I didn't know that: On 26 January 2019, [a decision was made] to close all 84 coal plants in the country by 2038...Coal was used to generate almost 40% of the country's electricity in 2018 and is expected to be replaced by renewable energy and natural gas. 24 coal plants are planned to be closed by 2022 with all but 8 closed by 2030.
Nuclear: per Wikipedia: A coalition government of Gerhard Schroeder took the decision in 2002 to phaseout all nuclear power by 2022...Within days of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, large anti-nuclear protests occurred in Germany...Merkel's government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. Eight of the seventeen operating reactors in Germany were permanently shut down following Fukushima in 2011. German coal consumption has risen during 2011, 2012 and 2013. (but is now decreasing)
Germany nuclear is 13%, but most of that is imported from France at this point, I think. So, no coal, no nuclear, hate natural gas - depend on renewables.
> During the same time, coal went from 45% to 23%
Although it's true, it could go like this:
Nuclear as share went from 17% to 20%; coal from 45% to 20%.
(I think China's coal plants tend to be smaller and so don't show up on these lists.)
If everyone else drops their emissions to zero (which needs to happen) and goes autarkic, cutting off all trade with China, assuming China maintains its stability and current energy mix, we'll still be screwed from a climate perspective.
We need everyone to reduce emissions, including China and the West both.
Wrong!
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...
The paper does state (and shows data for the top 10) indicating that the largest emitters also happen to be generally more inefficient (in terms of CO2 per power) than their national average (for fossil fuel plans).
EDIT: I just wanted to draw out the implications.
Based on paper figures, we can ballpark then that those 5% of plants produce on the order of 30-40% of fossil fuel production energy. Shutting down those 5% of plants would be relatively efficient in terms of % CO2 reduction vs energy production size needed.
That being said, since the goal long-term goal is basically 0 fossil fuels before 2050, what would be important to have policies that ensure that replacement capacity is meant with major decrease in emissions. Like, we could for example get a ~33% reduction in emissions by replacing some of these plants 1 for 1 with more efficient gas plants. But ideally we want even more draw down - that means having policies in place to ensure a significant amount of capacity is replaced with renewable sources.
That's really the challenge (and has been the challenge the entire time).
For those unfamiliar, gas plants are much less carbon intensive than coal plants. It gets a bit murkier if you include methane leaks, though gas is less dirty in terms of non greenhouse pollutants but basically both should be phased out and coal should generally go first.
"Illinois lawmakers are still debating a statewide energy proposal that would shutter the state’s coal-fired power plants by 2035. A local utility cooperative is asking its members to lobby lawmakers to keep it open.
Illinois Electric Cooperative has issued letters to their members asking to keep the plants open because they say it will cost utility rate payers more money and provide an unreliable electric grid of power.
IEC’s general manager Randy Long says it will also saddle the state with significant outstanding debt: “We believe it is probably going to reduce grid reliability and it’s going to cause good energy jobs to leave the State of Illinois along with the tax base to neighboring states and it’s going to increase our [utility] rates also. In 2035, the Prairie State plant will still have about $188 million worth of debt, and that is still going to have to be paid off. We’ll no longer be getting energy from that plant either, so we’ll have to replace that energy from another source. We are just very concerned about that – the increased costs to our members and also the reliability on the grid, which is really in the forefront after the blackouts we have just heard about in Texas and California recently.”"
(my note: it has been proven that the blackouts in California and Texas were not caused by renewables, but by grid mismanagement; solar and wind backed by storage is also cheaper than coal, so this is clearly not about cost but maintaining the status quo)
"PSEC started delivering electricity in 2012 at prices well above market rates. Some of its investors resell the energy at a loss, some raise consumer rates, and two backed out of the project. PSEC's original $2 billion estimated cost attracted municipal electric utilities to invest and to sign 28 year contracts. However, as of early 2010 the estimated cost had increased to $4.4 billion, requiring investors to borrow more money and raising the projected cost of electricity to undesirable levels. Peabody in response capped construction costs at "approximately $4 billion" excluding some costs such as coal development and transmission lines. In January 2013, with many municipalities adversely impacted by the high prices, the SEC subpoenaed information from Peabody. In a bid to exit its share of the Prairie State project, the City of Hermann, MO filed a lawsuit in March, 2015 against the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission and the Missouri Public Energy Pool, claiming that its share of $1.5 billion in debt issued to support Prairie State imposed an unconstitutionally high level of debt on the city.
Peabody divested its 5.06% stake in the project in 2016, accepting $57 million for its original investment of nearly $250 million. The buyer was Wabash Valley Power Association, a Midwest cooperative."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_State_Energy_Campus
[2] https://wlds.com/rural-electric-coops-face-uncertainty-with-...
If it’s held by investors, well, all investments can go down in value. If it’s held by companies that build carbon emitting plants, even better.
Carbon emitted in another country isn't any better than carbon emitted in your own country, but the religious-like attitude taken by certain politicians and climate activists ignores this. They seem to believe the supposed moral superiority of pushing carbon intensive activities outside of a nation's borders is worth something.
What we need is to make electric vehicles (including PHEVs) like 80-100% of our vehicle mix, not ~1% for current cars on the road or 2-4% of new vehicles. Then oil prices wouldn't matter so much politically (it'll still affect industry, but that's much less impactful politically compared to motor gasoline prices).
As far as Germany approving a pipeline with Russia, well... I agree it's pretty dumb. Germany needs to just end their coal entirely, which in the very near term means more gas, but they should also try to reverse the closure of nuclear power plants.
The problem is that we need them to be, or we’re all going to die (of fire, pollution, flooding, food shortages, etc.)
To see what I mean, try to buy a 6” diameter PVC sewer pipe. A large percentage of global PVC is still offline due to the Texas freeze last winter. This is causing road work and repairs to ground to a halt.
At the current rate of industrial collapse, how long until water treatment and other life-critical industries go offline?
But to really answer your question:
1) We invest in tech and scale up to make renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuel. Other countries will benefit from our scale and tech improvements, reducing the relative competitiveness of fossil fuels.
2) ban production and exports of fossil fuels. Instead, actually export clean energy in the form of ammonia/nitrate fertilizer (from green hydrogen), liquid hydrogen, perhaps synthesized LNG, synth fuels, clean electricity.
3) border adjustments and a CO2-based import tarrif.
4) cultural imperialism making clean energy good (fast electric cars are an excellent example) and fossil fuels unpalatable.
5) International agreements and treaties.
6) tied to that, maybe targeted aid contingent on climate action.
South Korea, having three, might be a better target here.
I agree that Germany should set an example. The German plant is 40 years old already anyway.
Other countries with newer plants would be more reluctant.
I mean the whole point is based on a wrong read on the paper...
1 Belchatow Poland 37,600,000 Coal 27 5298 1.756
2 Vindhyachal India 33,877,953 Coal 14 4760 1.485
3 Dangjin South Korea 33,500,000 Coal 10 6115 1.473
4 Taean South Korea 31,400,000 Coal 12 6100 1.481
5 Taichung Taiwan 29,900,000 Coal 22 5834 1.282
6 Tuoketuo China 29,460,000 Coal 10 6720 1.450
7 Niederaussem Germany 27,200,000 Coal 38 3826 1.451
5 & 7 already are now operating at reduced capacity, as alternative power plants have come online, and over a decade or so, the plan is to reduce operational capacity and possibly decommission. I suspect if you dig into some of the rest of these, you'll find similar situations.
I don't have any idea for what that really means. I Any idea how big a part of the overall carbon emissions problem that is?
Not that they don't help, but if we woke up tomorrow to a completely renewable global grid, looks like we'll have barely made headway into ending climate change.
Skimming through the page, I'd eyeball roughly 25% (from electricity and heating), 12% (~60% of 21% industrial), 10% (of the 14% from transport), 4% (from the 6% of buildings... note that this is only counting heating and onsite energy production, not life-cycle costs), and say 5% (from the 10% of other...). That works out to ~55%. Agriculture, Forestry and Land use takes a massive piece of the pie at 25% by itself. That alone makes it difficult for renewables alone to make things work.
That's why most models for net-zero include significant carbon capture projects, and why agriculture and land-use reform and conservation is so important.
I object to this language, and war generally
If we were serious about saving ourselves we would have started controlled scaling down of economic activity 30-40 years ago.
If we were serious about saving ourselves we would immediately start scaling down fossil fuel usage, but we currently are using more of every fossil fuel on Earth than we were 5 years ago.
As I pointed out in another comment, if we take aggressive action and make the most optimistic estimates regarding this path we'll see us reset our emissions back to 2010. Which is nice but not anywhere near enough in a short enough time span to make a difference.
If this is the "most encouraging bits of news" then we are in extreme danger.
edit: the irrational downvotes comments like this gets would crack me up if it wasn't so sad. We've tried to solve climate change through "more production" for decades now and have only see things get worse. If you disagree with me, please show me some basic estimates about how you have a solution that scales up to working.
I think this may be one of the most encouraging bits of news about AGW that I've seen in a long time. 5% of electric power plants (about 1500 plants) is a lot, but it's a manageable lot. This gives us a clearly defined area of attack with a very high ROI. It seems to say: if we're going to get serious about saving ourselves, start here and go all in. The paper lists the top 10 polluting plants... unsurprisingly many of them are in China and India, but at least one is in Germany. If Germany wants to set an example, there's where to start.