More than 30% of world’s electricity now comes from renewables, report reveals
More than 30% of world’s electricity now comes from renewables, report reveals
A decline in fossil fuel power is now ‘inevitable’, the report's authors say.
Electricity vs. energy. Electricity is only part of energy.
Even still, this is a great progress in the last decade.
We're headed in the right direction, even if we better accelerate and spread practices elsewhere.
Can you clarify what the distinction is?
There are places where natural gas is used for heating and cooking by combustion. These tasks can also be done with electricity for the power source and then we'll be overall cleaner. However the transition is a massive task and requires a lot of convincing (e.g. that cooking with induction is as good or better even than gas, heat pump costs less in the long run).
And to celebrate that fact, Europe is joining the US in imposing massive tariffs on China's electric vehicles and solar cells. Yay.
I largely welcome restricting massproduced mobile surveillance machines made by a chinese hq'd company. Don't misunderstand me I hate teslas too for this, but we don't need more of this shit.
That’s a good thing imo. We do this so we can build up an industry for these things at home. That’s an important long term goal, too. If the last years have shown us anything it’s that being solely dependent on another state for certain critical stuff is a bad idea. And I’d say this is especially true for China.
Edit: btw German talking here, not American.
That’s a good thing imo. We do this so we can build up an industry for these things at home.
Unfortunately, most countries haven't really done much to invest into the production of solar cells in their home country in the last twenty years (Germany is a noteworthy exception), so why would they start now?
Realistically, imposing tariffs on chinese PV cells will only slow the energy transition, instead of building up domestic production.
One of the main reasons we as a society care about renewables is that we need to reduce CO2 emissions (and I'd like to think we care about others too). This article doesn't mention anything about how much less CO2 is now being released. If we take EPA numbers from 2022, assume that they represent 100% non-renewable energy, take the 25% of those numbers that represent electricity generation and reduce the total.of that proportion we have a reduction of approximately 8% CO2 emissions. Great!
So why do our emissions keep increasing year over year?
A political economic system which requires infinite growth to sustain itself, requires growth in consumption, and production. If emissions go down, some industry will suffer (namely oil and gas), so their products must be used elsewhere. A collapse of the oil and gas industry would be an economic nightmare the way we currently organize our economy.
And that is why we need to move beyond capitalism.
I suppose greenwashing works? in the sense creates favorable stats, not that it helps the environment.
You really don't like to admit even the smallest bit of positive news, do you?
Obviously I don't see this as good news because I can't see how ecology and capitalism can work together, unless it is greenwashing. Environmentalism/ecology/etc want sustainability, capitalism is all about eternal growth of the business, and I don't see corporations and other financial entities changing their business model? Do you?
It looks like we have different criteria on what is positive news.
Pretty ironic that it took Putin invading Ukraine to make Europe invest into renewables.
And not to save the planet but to be less dependent on energy from fossil fuels...
I don't like being cynical like this, but:
Putin's war really did something for the climate.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Energy think tank Ember found that major growth in wind and solar helped push global electricity production past this milestone in 2023.
Its authors say that this rapid growth has brought the world to a crucial turning point where fossil fuel generation starts to decline.
“You also have the invasion of Ukraine which increased the sense of urgency around transitioning to clean power and getting off relying on fossil fuels - not just coal but also gas, and particularly from Russia.
Plans were put in place to help individual member states reach renewable energy targets and deploy technologies at a national scale.
“Certainly you can't ignore that there was some demand [based] impact on the decrease in use of fossil fuels, but also there was a significant role of wind and solar replacing it.”
Normally this would have meant that the clean energy capacity added around the world last year would have caused fossil fuel generation to drop by 1.1 per cent.
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