Today’s article is based on the second paper I wrote for my Sustainable Strategy Seminar for my MBA in Sustainable Business and Energy at Presidio Graduate School. It is a system thinking approach to obesity. Hope you like it !
OECD
On biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)
If my Friday post got you down, this might cheer you up a little bit. After the study quoted three weeks ago, another one states that we could actually limit rising temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. But we have to act FAST.
This one was carried out by the Climate Action Network and Climate Analytics and shows that global emissions levels have to peak in 2020 if we want our beautiful planet to cool from the middle of the century. Now that’s good news !
One of the leading scientists quoted in RTCC stated that we need new technologies, a derivative of carbon capture and storage.
IEA : Global CO2 emissions increased in 2011
As the situation is getting more and more desperate and climate gets weirder, global greenhouse gases emissions keep on increasing globally. As the International Energy Agency stated last week :
” Global carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011, according to preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA). ”
” This represents an increase of 1.0 Gt on 2010, or 3.2%. Coal accounted for 45% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2011, followed by oil (35%) and natural gas (20%).”
2050 and the consequences of inaction
” Humanity has witnessed unprecedented growth and prosperity in the past decades, with the size of the world economy more than tripling and population increasing by over 3 billion people since 1970. “ ” This growth, however, has been accompanied by environmental pollution and natural resource depletion. The current growth model and the mismanagement of … Read more
A compelling example from Iceland
A post on TreeHugger got my attention last week. It was about how the President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, stated that further to the economic downturn in 2007 he putted people before banks and cleantech before fossil fuels. As the OECD notes, the economic situation is improving quickly and now the country is powered … Read more
Cleantech is progressing fast
… but fossil fuels are progressing even faster. This is in a nutshell the message from the International Energy Agency’s (IEA, the OECD energy office) latest report, the Clean Energy Progress Report. As GreenTechMedia noted :
” Renewable energy generation has grown, on average, by 2.7 percent a year since 1990. Electricity generation, however, has grown by 3 percent, meaning that the steps forward have been eclipsed by the overall market.”
Indeed, coal, despite being dozens of times dirtier than renewables, has fulfilled 47 percent of the new electricity demand in the past decade.
China becomes the world’s first energy consumer
According to the International Energy Agency, China became in 2009 the world’s biggest energy consumer in front of the USA. Indeed it consumed 2.25 billion tons of oil equivalent (TOE) while the latter consumed 2.17 billions.
To the Wall Street Journal : ” China’s total energy consumption was just half that of the U.S. 10 years ago, but in many of the years since, China saw annual double-digit growth rates. “
The IEA notes that these figures would be much higher without the important energy efficiency efforts carried out in the past few years.
OECD urging to act on climate change
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development – the body regrouping some of the richest nations – is now urging its members to act fast on climate change.
Solutions to this challenge exist and Mankind just needs to apply them. Moreover, they are affordable compared to the cost inaction would have on a global scale.
This is quite revealing of the level of the threat that such an economic body focuses on it. Most importantly we know that it can be avoided.