It turns out that the country that got attacked the most for backing out of the Paris Accord happens to be the one that reduced CO2 emissions the most last year, writes Die Welt’s energy journalist, Daniel Wetzel, who wrote:
Now the results are in: No country in the world saved more CO2 in 2017 than the USA. And it is because of the eco-effect.”
Top CO2 saver among a record emissions year
Wetzel cited the latest results of the International Energy Agency IEA, which also stated that global CO2 emissions reached a new all-time record high after having stagnated the three previous years. In 2017, global CO2 emissions rose a robust 2.1 percent – “due to strong economic growth,” Wetzel writes.
On USA’s impressive reductions, Wetzel called it “bizarre”:
Foremost a development emerged that was quite bizarre: Of all countries, the USA under President Donald Trump was the world’s most successful climate protector.”
“Green champions” fail to deliver
According to the IEA, the USA reduced CO2 emissions by 23 million metric tonnes, emitting 4.81 billion tonnes.
Meanwhile some of the world’s most vocal proponents of CO2 emissions reductions and supporters of the Paris Accord failed to reduce CO2 emissions at all. The European Union, which fancies itself a champion of green energies and moral beacon, actually saw its emissions rise by 46 million tonnes!
Also eco-pompous Germany, whose car industry cheated the world, has not reduced emissions some 9 years running:
:
Germany CO2 equivalent emissions, millions of metric tons. Source UBA.
It was the third year in a row that the USA reduced CO2 emissions, a result that Wetzel called “surprising”.
The reduction, according to Die Welt’s Daniel Wetzel, was attributed to the USA’s 17% energy supplied by renewable sources and that 20% of the electric power was produced by nuclear plants.
Trump’s great solar project
The news of Trump being the 2017’s best climate-saver did not go down well among climate activists. Germany’s alarmist site Klimaretter insisted that Trump had little to do with the development. Klimaretter claimed the good result from the USA was “due to the strong expansion in renewable energies. This occurred not because of Trump, but rather despite the President’s politics.”
Currently Trump is proposing the installation of solar panels on the wall along the border to Mexico, which would make it one of the largest solar power facilities in the country.
Do you have a link to the Die Welt article? Their search function is broken and I can’t find it …
Sorry…link now added above in the article. Here: https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article174814149/CO2-Werte-Ausgerechnet-Trumps-Amerika-hat-die-weltweit-beste-Klimabilanz.html
Nope, the IEA claims this, not the blogger you quote.
Germany isn’t mentioned at this link (http://www.iea.org/geco/emissions/), but let’s take the UK vs. USA instead.
UK down 15 Mt to 350 Mt of CO2, USA down 25 Mt to 4810 Mt of CO2.
Let’s break it down per capita: UK 5.33, USA 14.77 tonnes per capita.
Well, it ought to be easier for the 147 kg person to lose weight than for the 53 kg person, right? But hey, it’s a good thing that the US managed to reduce CO2 emissions mainly by employing more renewables (according to the IEA) instead of switching from coal to gas like last year (according to the IEA).
And what’s insane is that a 53-kg guy would want to lose much more. Or a 80-kg person (Germany) would throw out its diet food (nuclear) and insist on losing weight. Worse is that the 53-kg man would insist that the near starvation 35-kg persons should stay as they are.
Well, then take another analogy where reaching 0 is actually desireable. The point is, it seems to be hard to reduce something the less there is to reduce. Say, you want to create a vacuum by pumping out the air in a cylinder. That’s easy when starting at higher initial pressure than if you already pumped out 2/3 of the air.
We have had this argument many times before. I pointed this out to you when the US pulled out from the Paris Accord. I advised you that even outside the Paris Accord, the US would be the most successful developed nation at reducing its CO2 emissions, and that Germany would fail to reduce its CO2 emissions.
The point is that if Germany were to frack, rather than roll out wind and solar, it would reduce its CO2 emissions.
Germany is presently doing something that will not result in the reduction of its CO2 emissions since wind and solar do not reduce CO2 emissions, to any meaningful extent, since wind and solar are unreliable and non despatchable and require backup from fossil fuel generation.
Even if it is easier for the USA to reduce its CO2 emissions, because it is coming from a higher base, the USA is exploiting the only known non nuclear option that results in actual measurable reduction of CO2 emissions, ie., switching to fracked gas.
If Europe is serious in its desire to reduce its CO2 emissions, it should either go nuclear, or should frack for gas.
Exactly.
https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.ospe.on.ca/resource/resmgr/DOC_advocacy/2015_Presentation_Elec_Dilem.pdf
Why Will Emissions Double as We Add Wind and Solar Plants? [pg. 15]
Wind and Solar require flexible backup generation. Nuclear is too inflexible to backup renewables without expensive engineering changes to the reactors. Flexible electric storage is too expensive at the moment. Consequently natural gas provides the backup for wind and solar in North America. When you add wind and solar you are actually forced to reduce nuclear generation to make room for more natural gas generation to provide flexible backup.
Ontario currently produces electricity at less than 40 grams of CO2 emissions/kWh. Wind and solar with natural gas backup produces electricity at about 200 grams of CO2 emissions/kWh. Therefore adding wind and solar to Ontario’s grid drives CO2 emissions higher.
From 2016 to 2032 as Ontario phases out nuclear capacity to make room for wind and solar, CO2 emissions will double (2013 LTEP data). In Ontario, with limited economic hydro and expensive storage, it is mathematically impossible to achieve low CO2 emissions at reasonable electricity prices without nuclear generation.
https://www.westernenergyalliance.org/knowledge-center/air/methane
In fact, combined-cycle natural gas turbines cut 2.6 times more CO2 emissions than wind and four times more than solar. That’s because even though renewables avoid emissions when they produce electricity, they only do so when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. By comparison, natural gas reduces CO2 emissions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Electric utilities have taken advantage of clean and affordable natural gas, allowing U.S. GHG emissions to fall more than any other country since 2006.
The positive impacts of the natural gas revolution haven’t gone unnoticed. According to The Breakthrough Institute: “… since 1950, natural gas and nuclear prevented 36 times more carbon emissions than wind, solar, and geothermal.
It’s by design, Kennet. Those who are pushing ruinables want civilization to fail. They really aren’t just mistaken. They are evil, …that and/or really really stupid.
Yes richard, and you didn’t realize that what you say is a blatant lie. Is this why you keep repeating that renewables don’t reduce CO2 emissions? Even in the comments below an article that refers to a report that says exactly this?! Weird.
Ok, let’s keep with the vacuum example then. Why would you chose to make use of a pump that can only achieve 500 mBar? (gas = halving emissions from coal) Why not use a pump that can go to near 0 mBar? (anything that doesn’t emit CO2)
Kenneth master cherry-picker and alumni of the school of extrapolating from one example to the whole world …
Why do you keep bringing up this? When has Canada last build a nuclear reactor? Why do you think they have not continued to do so? Because it is prohibitively expensive. Naturally, they will not be keeping their power plants forever and need to replace them with other sources of electricity.
And why do you keep bringing up this? If you replace 100 TWh of coal power with 90 TWh gas and 10 TWh wind/solar, of course gas saved more CO2 emissions. It’s dishonest to defer from this, that replacing 1 TWh of coal with 1 TWh of wind/solar would reduce emissions by less than replacing that 1 TWh coal with 1 TWh of gas. Wouldn’t you agree? Or is this a “trick” that you are comfortable with?
Since 1950 … how many emissions were prevented by new nuclear power stations since 2000 in Canada? How many emissions were prevented by the one newly built nuclear power plant in the USA (2016) since the one before this one became operational in 1996?
Anyway, it is interesting that you can wrap your head around a statement like this (basically, electricity produced by gas/nuclear prevents production from coal and thus saved emissions), but are unable to understand that renewables do exactly the same (replacing emissions from coal) and they even do it more effectively than gas and way cheaper than nuclear. Weird.
“Yes richard, and you didn’t realize that what you say is a blatant lie” – malicious moron activist chatbot
1. – If an otherwise honest person doesn’t know what he says is wrong, HE IS NOT LYING!
2. – A bloviating nitwit like yourself is always lying, whether he knows it or not, and by now it is just impossible you don’t.
2.1% increase in GLOBAL CO2 emissions last year, seb
and probably a bigger increase next year as more of the 1600 or so NEW coal powered stations come on line..
GET OVER IT.
And rejoice the SEMI-ABUNDANCE of plant food to green and feed the world.
MUCH MORE is needed.
Sore grapes and another MEANINGLESS analogy.
Poor seb. 🙂
World INCREASE in CO2 emissions of 2.1%..
WONDERFUL NEWS for plant life, and the planet.
Your analogy is self explanatory, Pierre. But the chatbot’s isn’t analogous to anything relevant, as usual. If he doesn’t know that, he’s even stupider than Andy gives him credit for being. If it’s by design, his malice is at least as bad as I credit him with.
I know, DNFTT … but what the hell is wrong with you yonason? Is this the “high standard” this blog tries to adhere to? Comments like this don’t get deleted/edited? Why?
So when you routinely call people you don’t agree with (us) nutters, insane, trolls, deniers, clowns; claim that we think 1+1=3 and we can’t do simple math or understand “basic physics”; claim that we’re conspiracy theorists who live in fantasy land and believe in “unicorn farts”; frequently reference others’ skin color, engage in ageist bigotry; concoct straw men, make up false positions and statements that no one has written; engage in dishonesty; write “What the hell is wrong with you yonason?”…and those comments go through after moderation…you nonetheless think it’s an injustice and therefore you are entitled to whine about someone else writing that you must be “stupider” than thought if you don’t recognize that your analogies are perceived as not “analagous to anything relevant” here? SebastianH, the audacity, rudeness, smugness, and sense of entitlement that characterizes many of your posts borders on the grotesque.
Yes, comments like YOURS do need to be DELETED, seb.
None of your comments add ANYTHING to rational discussion.
Basic LOW-LEVEL trolling is all we ever get from you.
And for the record, there is absolutely NO WAY than anyone could be STUPIDER than I think you are. It is not a mental possibility.
Kenneth Richard 5. April 2018 at 9:17 AM |
OK, then. Well put! No need to follow that. You’ve covered all the bases.
Oh the irony!
President Trump was demonised for pulling America out of the ludicrous Paris agreement, yet thanks to his promotion of fossil fuels has achieved greater CO2 reductions than the “holier than thou” EUSSR.
Suck it up!
The best thing from Trump versus Paris was the saving of US citizens money. If US money goes to projects in poorer countries, it should be done directly. Sending money to a UN slush fund ought to be a criminal act.
US energy supply is mostly NOT a function of the National Government, although some small amount of credit for 2017 seems reasonable. Perhaps, more in 2018 because the Trump policies will be operating more/longer.
You do realize though that the reduction of CO2 emissions comes from a higher output of renewables, right? What are Trump’s policies on renewables again?
Hopefully he realises that they are just a niche, UNRELIABLE feel-good non-solution to s non-problem.
The chart at this link puts wind and solar energy supply in its true perspective:
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/RenewableInvestment3-1.png
There is great folly subsidising uneconomic wind and solar generation. Wind and solar only makes sense off grid. Grids developed through the need to get energy from coal fields to industry near population centres. There is an economic niche market already for the current wind and solar technology. Exploiting those applications might lead to the necessary improvements to make them competitive sources with grid supply. Right now ever increasing subsidised wind and solar connected to the grid is making grids uneconomic. Already the lowest cost power supply for households in South Australia is solar/battery because they have enough wind and solar already connected to the grid to destroy the economics. Grid electricity supply in south Australia has become a social service with most recent enhancements paid for from general revenue (read State debt financing).
Nice graph, Rick.
They tell us wind and solar will replace other sources. Heck, they can’t even keep pace, let alone EVER catch up.
No, that is because it has become cheap to buy solar/battery solutions and the price will drop even further.
Also wind/solar are economical in lots of regions now and since we aren’t at the end of the price spiral yet, will become economical (read: not in need of subsidies) in lots of other regions too. As your graph visualizes … we are just at the beginning.
Sebastian
I have been supplying part of my household load off-grid for just over 5 years. In that time there have been two days when the battery ran flat and I connected the load to the grid supply.
I live in Melbourne Australia. My off grid system supplies a fridge and freezer that have average demand of 2.5kWh/day in winter and it can get as high as 3.5kWh/day in summer due to more frequent opening and closing. To operate this system I have 3kW of solar panels and 5kW of batteries. So the storage has 48 hours capacity for the load and the solar has a 4% capacity factor. My panels average 3.5 hours of sunlight compared to ideal 4 hours for this location. (I know this because I have an on-grid system as well so they give the unconstrained capacity factor)
The unit cost of electricity based on Term Deposits at 3.5% foregone over a 25 year life, including one battery replacement, works out at 55c/kWh. I cannot buy any of the items at lower cost than I did 5 years ago. Price of panels in AUD terms is the same as 5 years ago. Batteries and inverter are more expensive in AUD terms than 5 years ago. I could have lowered the unit cost by using a small generator and reducing the number of panels but that would add complexity.
Without infinite storage the capacity factor of wind and solar reduces as a function of market share. This paper on the German grid explains it very well:
http://www.hanswernersinn.de/dcs/2017%20Buffering%20Volatility%20EER%2099%202017.pdf
The only reason solar/battery has become economic in South Australia is that the grid power costs have achieved WORLD RECORD levels. Current retail price averages 47c/kWh. So a solar/battery/grid system that can make money through grid connection in summer and have the grid support in winter can be economic. A few freezer loads of food saved through avoiding a blackout also mounts up.
Intermittent generation only makes sense off-grid. Once connected to the grid they destroy the economics of the grid.
I still see nonsense comparisons using LCOE for wind generators and coal generators. These comparisons fail on three grounds:
1. The wind requires 100% back-up with fossil fuel, battery for at least two days or hydro for at least two days or some combination of all there methods of buffering.
2. As the Sinn paper points out the capacity factor inevitably falls as the market share increases – he refers to it as “efficiency” but the more common term is capacity factor.
3. Grid enhancements to cater for the decentralised generation and supporting services from dispatchable generating assets able to maintain system stability. South Australia has to have a minimum of 3 gas turbines on line to maintain system stability. That sometimes constrains the output of the wind generators.
South Australia shows the folly of trying to get high penetration of wind and solar into the grid. The system operator AEMO forecasts that the minimum demand on the grid in SA will be ZERO by 2024. The reason is that people are installing rooftop so fast that it is annihilating midday demand. Many now complain about their solar systems shutting down on over voltage so that incentivises them to add batteries, having already sunk costs in panels. There will be times when the grid scale wind and solar has ZERO demand. That will very obviously constrain the capacity factor of those grid assets. All those grid assets and fewer kWh will continue to force grid prices up.
This link shows SA demand for 17 Sept 2017:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNgnkbeHAkKxEPkH_f
Half the midday demand is being fed by rooftop solar leaving 570MW for grid scale generators.
So it is not a function of solar and batteries prices coming down (they are not in AUD terms) but the skyrocketing price for grid power. All the latest grid enhancements in SA have to be paid for from general revenue as consumers will not/ cannot bear the costs. Those with capital choose to make their own while those without money simply get disconnected. SA has the highest rate of disconnections in the country. The State government that promoted the folly were voted out in March. It will be difficult to clean up this economic mess.
Thank you, a very comprehensive analysis of an avoidable disaster. Good luck! (My brother lives in NSW)
The new State government in South Australia is aiming to get a much higher power link between SA and NSW. That will give the wind generators in SA much better access to the NSW network.
A higher power connection improves the reliability of supply in SA but will drive up prices in NSW as the base demand in NSW will fall. That threatens the economics of NSW coal stations.
Every electricity consumer in NSW should be lobbying their politicians to prevent any increase in the capacity of the interconnection.
Victoria already has a 600MW link to SA and that was enough to destroy the economics of the lowest order brown coal station in the state. Wholesale prices in Victoria have doubled since its closure.
It appears very few people understand how all this plays out.
Germany only gets 14% of its power from intermittent generation so it is at the early stages of economic destruction. SA managed 39% before the stability issues caused network collapse. However the economic damage was already apparent by then.
@Rick Will
Here’s yet another reason to reject them.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/another-reason-to-reject-wind-farms/
“Consequently, these several findings led Tang et al. to conclude that their research ‘provides significant observational evidence that wind farms can inhibit the growth and productivity of the underlying vegetation‘.”
H/T – John Ray’s Greenie Watch blog
Co2 Emissions are good the more the better its called plant food
Ahh, Eliza, another gardener here, and one with some knowledge and skill I would wager. 🌺
What is the point?
Globalists, who already control most of the world’s economy,…
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/04/04/very-important-economic-confrontation-neil-cavuto-vs-larry-kudlow/
…want to complete the enslavement of the world by gaining legal control of everything. The latter is what AGW has always been about, becoming the official socialist masters of the world.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-a-back-door-to-communism-and-the-united-nations-admits-it/
See also here.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/another-climate-alarmist-admits-real-motive-behind-warming-scare/
All the talk of weather vs climate, warming vs cooling, etc., etc., is just a distraction.
You don’t have to out you as conspiracy theorist every time you post something … we know you probably think “they” are after you. Complete enslavement of the world … oh dear 😉
See Kenneth, this is why you guys are seen as conspiracy theorists.
Say the people who panic over the fallacy that a trace increase of a trace gas in the atmosphere is going to cause the planet to go under in 80 years, or that Big Oil is behind the “denier movement”. Again, Sebastian, you’re out of bounds. Kenneth portrays it accurately. You don’t like a person disagreeing, and so you start name-calling. You’ll have to find a more mature manner to cope with your frustration.
Poor seb, still stuck on the conspiracy mantra.
Must be you have insider information, hey.
When they say it themselves (AS IS DOCUMENTED IN THE LINKS I POSTED) I believe it.
When one of their shills denies it, I’m not so foolish as to believe him/her/it/whatever.
OT as far as climate goes, but not when it comes to the globalists’ social engineering program, of which AGW is just one component.
https://youtu.be/pCRTMLFlex8
H/T – Anonymous poster at Moonbattery.
http://moonbattery.com/prosecutors-demand-5000-fine-against-french-politician-for-telling-truth-about-replacement-migration/
The solar panels on the wall would be facing south I assume. Wouldn’t that make them a tempting target for slingshots? (I did get the joke by the way!).
I didn’t snip anyone that I’m aware of.
All there now, but…
…never mind.
Thanks.