<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/too-late-too-slow-too-hot-is-climate-progress-really-stalling/>
"The debate over climate change and the energy transition never goes away, and
right now it’s at a rolling boil.
David Suzuki says “It’s too late, we’ve lost.” James Dyke says “action on
phasing out fossil fuels is slowing down or even stalling.”
Optimists love solar’s incredible run and bright future, pessimists point out
that it still only provides 1% of primary energy, we’re staring down the barrel
of 1.5 ºC, and question whether a transition is even happening. Degrowthers
argue that even solar is not truly renewable, only “rebuildable” as the panels
still require mining ever-poorer ores.
Clearly there are many ways to slice the data. Here I’ll look at renewable
energy as a proportion of final energy demand.
It’s a particularly challenging measure as it is stubbornly low, having
increased only from 10% to 15% in the past decade, and the target is so far
away – it has to get close to 100% in the second half of this century just to
limit warming to 2ºC.
This metric takes into account both positive effects like rising renewables and
also negative effects like increasing population, increasing economic activity,
and a failure to phase out fossil fuels.
I’ll use data from
Our World in Data, which inflates renewable energy using
the ‘substitution’ method; if you stick to proportions (and not absolute
amounts), that gives a reasonable approximation to renewable energy as a
proportion of final energy demand.
On this measure, is progress stalling?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
