Category Archives: CO2

Solar prices will drop much further below fossil fuels

High-placed utility executives have told me solar panels can’t get any cheaper. Here’s why economies of scale will continue to drive solar prices down, just like for Henry Ford’s Model T. There’s no excuse for new pipelines or nukes. Let the sun rise!

tl;dr: If current rates of improvement hold, solar will be incredibly cheap by the time it’s a substantial fraction of the world’s electricity supply.

Ramez Naam, on his blog, 10 August 2015, What’s the future price of solar?, Continue reading →

Citi agrees fixing climate change is profitable

Save more by acting to fix climate change, on similar overall investment for trying to deal with unfixed effects, says Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions (GPS). Save more on similar expense: that’s profiting by fixing climate change. Fastest way to do that with least expense: deny all new pipelines, all LNG export, and end fracking.

Dana Nuccitelli, Guardian, 31 August 2015, Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars: A report from America’s 3rd-largest bank asks why we’re not transitioning to a low-carbon economy, Continue reading →

100% renewable energy for U.S. by 2050

Here’s how to convert everything from air conditioners to trucks 300x170 End-Use U.S. Power Change over Time, in 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States, by Mark Z. Jacobson et al., 27 May 2015 from fossil fuels to 100% renewable sun, wind, and water power by 2050, generating more jobs than would be lost from dirty energy, stopping tens of thousands of premature deaths from pollution, saving about 4% of U.S. GDP, plus saving $3.3 trillion worldwide climate change costs.

That’s 100% as in no coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, or biomass, just clean solar, wind, and water power: 90% by 2035, 80% by 2030, and 25% by 2025. No new technology required: just existing solar, wind, and water power production with batteries and hydrogen fuel cells for transportation, plus huge efficiency savings both from using electricity directly and through other well-known techniques.

A cleaner, healthier world is within our reach. And when even the country’s most corrupt legislature can unanimously pass and the Georgia governor who took campaign funds from six pipeline companies can sign a solar financing law, while Georgia has already become the fastest-growing solar market in the country, renewable energy is producing the political will to get this done.

Stanford Report, 8 June 2015, Continue reading →

Exxon acted on climate change in 1981, funded deniers 27 more years, and is back at same Malaysia oil and gas field

Exxon showed more sense three decades ago than now, when it’s back at the same Malaysian oil and gas field it backed off from in 1981 because it would release massive amounts of carbon dioxide that would accelerate climate change. It’s time to end the era of fossil fuels and get on with changing the world to cheaper, faster, and far cleaner sun, wind, and water power.

A decade before Al Gore’s 1992 book Earth in the Balance, years before Bill McKibben’s 1989 book The End of Nature, before the same year as the publication of the first GISS scientific study on Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide in Science,, according to Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, 8 July 2015, Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says — but it funded deniers for 27 more years, Continue reading →

Georgia #1 in solar jobs and China beats its own emissions pledge

It’s great the three biggest climate change problem countries are finally 300x454 E2 Top 10 Q1 2015, in Clean Energy Works for US: Q1 2015 Jobs Report, by Environmental Entrepeneurs, 30 June 2015 committing to emissions reductions and other substantial changes, although not enough to, you know, stop global warming from getting even worse. Meanwhile, CO2 emissions did not increase from 2013 to 2014, even though the global economy grew, and this was largely because of renewable energy deployment in China. That’s right: China is actually leading the way faster on climate change than it is promising to do. And the old fake excuse that we need fossil fuels for economic growth is busted. Oh, and Georgia is leading the U.S.!

Chris Mooney and Steven Mufson, Washington Post, 30 June 2015, In a major moment for climate policy, China, Brazil, and the U.S. all announce new commitments, Continue reading →

Jimmy Carter’s dream of a solar-powered world is coming true now

U.S. president Jimmy Carter had a dream, 300x300 10360845 897383750328270 6241606373708524983 N, in Work together to turn our vision and dream into a solar reality --Jimmy Carter, by Climate Reality Project, 20 June 1979 thirty six years before Pope Francis spelled out why we all need to escape a dark hot nightmare, and Jimmy Carter’s sunny dream is now coming true.

Today, in directly harnessing the power of the Sun, we’re taking the energy that God gave us, the most renewable energy that we will ever see, and using it to replace our dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.

Continue reading →

Atlanta TV station exposes ALEC lobbyists in Savannah

Caught on-camera: ALEC’s off-duty sheriff’s deputies getting TV reporters thrown out of their own hotel for “taking pictures in the hotel”, after ALEC’s marketing droid denied any lobbying going on, nevermind the lobbyist and legislator in a bar spelling out how it works: ALEC gives “scholarships” to legislators who then meet in closed rooms with corporate reps (including all the companies involved in the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline) who have equal votes on draft bills for legislators to get passed as law in many states. Bills promoting fracking, pipelines, LNG export, and against solar power, renewable portfolio standards, not to mention for private prisons and privatized education and against municipal broadband and country-of-origin labelling, plus many other corporate give-aways subsidized by the taxpayers and the environment. It’s time for the IRS to revoke ALEC’s 501(c)(3) status. And for the Georgia legislature to apply the state’s sunshine laws to itself.

Brendan Keefe and Michael King, WXIA-TV, 22 May 2015, Legislators and corporate lobbyists meet in secret at Georgia resort, Continue reading →

Fossil fuel subsidies 6% of world GDP: more than all govt health care spending in world

End fossil fuel subsidies and cut CO2 emissions by 20%, also removing any need for renewable energy subsidies.

Fossil fuels subsidised by $10m a minute, says IMF: ‘Shocking’ revelation finds $5.3tn subsidy estimate for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments,

300x251 Subsidies as percent of global GDP, in How Large Are Global Energy Subsidies?, by David Coady, Ian Parry, Louis Sears, and Baoping Shang, 1 May 2015 Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.

The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include Continue reading →

China reduced CO2 emissions by 8% in 4 months

The carbon bubble is popping faster than most people imagined, and renewable sun, wind, and water power is taking over.

Ari Phillips, ThinkProgress, 15 May 2015, It Only Took Four Months For China To Achieve A Jaw-Dropping Reduction In Carbon Emissions,

China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, so small decreases in its emissions seem like monumental feats when compared to other countries. According to a new analysis, in the first four months of 2015, China’s coal use fell almost 8 percent compared to the same period last year — a reduction in emissions that’s approximately equal to the total carbon dioxide emissions of the U.K. over the same period.

The analysis, published by Greenpeace and Energydesk China, reviewed data from a number of sources, including China’s industrial output, and found that China had reduced its coal output by 6.1 percent in the first four months of 2015. The research team calculated that the drop in coal use translates into a nearly 5 percent drop in domestic CO2 emissions.

Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst who worked on the Greenpeace report, told RTCC that the report shows that China’s industrial output and thermal power generation are falling while renewable energy sources like hydro, wind, and solar are growing fast.

Niall McCarthy, Forbes, 12 May 2015, China’s Revolution In Wind Energy [Infographic], Continue reading →

VSU President’s Committee votes to divest from fossil fuels

Students, staff, faculty, and administration all say divest from fossil fuels. What will the VSU Foundation do now? One year after the committee was appointed 10 April 2014, it made a decision 8 April 2015:

S.A.V.E. applauds the decision by the President’s Special Committee on Campus Sustainability to support fossil fuel divestment. Leadership and stewardship are part and parcel to Valdosta State’s role as an institution of higher education and we call on VSU to honor these ethos by divesting from fossil fuels, ending its profiteering from ecological harm, environmental destruction, and human suffering.

Benjamin Vieth, the representative of Students Against Violating the Environment (S.A.V.E.) on that Committee, sent the above announcement after approval by S.A.V.E. Among other organizations included on that committee, Continue reading →