We can relax now (sic) - renewables are taking over the world and our consumption of coal is declining. Human civilisation is safe - the Guardian and other number of publications spewing out propaganda would have us believe.
Surge in renewable energy stalls world greenhouse gas emissions
The article, Consumption Heads for Biggest Decline in History is reproduced many times repeating the same line.
But other stories suggesting that China is cooking the books to make things look good (imagine that!) or that coal consumption is actually on the increase in different parts of the world, gets less attention.
Meanwhile CO2 levels were mneasured at nearly 405 ppm and warming globally has gone exponential.
Are we to see the Guardian article as an honest mistake, propaganda - or simply so much bullshit?
Surge in renewable energy stalls world greenhouse gas emissions
Falling
coal use in China and the US and a shift towards renewable energy
globally saw energy emissions level for the second year running, says
IEA
Falling
coal use in China and the US and a worldwide shift towards renewable
energy have kept greenhouse gas emissions level for a second year
running, one of the world’s leading energy analysts has said.
Preliminary
data for 2015 from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showed that
carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector have levelled off at
32.1bn tonnes even as the global economy grew over 3% .
Electricity
generated by renewable sources played a critical role, having
accounted for around 90% of new electricity generation in 2015. Wind
power produced more than half of all new electricity generation, said
the IEA.
- Global coal use fell up to 4.6% this year through September
- Coal consumption is poised for its biggest decline in history, driven by China’s battle against pollution, economic reforms and its efforts to promote renewable energy.
Global
use of the most polluting fuel fell 2.3 percent to 4.6 percent in the
first nine months of 2015 from the same period last year, according
to a report released Monday by the environmental group Greenpeace.
That’s a decline of as much as 180 million tons of standard coal,
40 million tons more than Japan used in the same period.
The
report confirms that worldwide efforts to fight global warming are
having a significant impact on the coal industry, the biggest source
of carbon emissions. It comes a day before the International Energy
Agency is scheduled to release its annual forecast detailing the ways
the planet generates and uses electricity.
“These
trends show that the so-called global coal boom in the first decade
of the 21st century was a mirage,” said Lauri Myllyvirta,
Greenpeace’s coal and energy campaigner.
China Burns Much More Coal Than Reported, Complicating Climate Talks
2 November, 2015
BEIJING
— China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases from
coal, has been burning up to 17 percent more coal a year than the
government previously disclosed, according to newly released data.
The finding could complicate the already difficult efforts to limit
global warming.
Even
for a country of China’s size, the scale of the correction is
immense. The sharp upward revision in official figures means that
China has released much more carbon dioxide — almost a billion more
tons a year according to initial calculations — than previously
estimated.
The
increase alone is greater than the whole German economy emits
annually from fossil fuels.
Officials
from around the world will have to come to grips with the new figures
when they gather in Paris this month to negotiate an international
framework for curtailing greenhouse-gas pollution. The data also pose
a challenge for scientists who are trying to reduce China’s smog,
which often bathes whole regions in acrid, unhealthy haze.
The
Chinese government has promised to halt the growth of its emissions
of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse pollutant from coal and other
fossil fuels, by 2030. The new data suggest that the task of meeting
that deadline by reducing China’s dependence on coal will be more
daunting and urgent than expected, said Yang Fuqiang, a former energy
official in China who now advises the Natural Resources Defense
Council.
“This
will have a big impact, because China has been burning so much more
coal than we believed,” Mr. Yang said. “It turns out that it was
an even bigger emitter than we imagined. This helps to explain why
China’s air quality is so poor, and that will make it easier to get
national leaders to take this seriously.”
The
new data, which appeared recently in an energy statistics yearbook
published without fanfare by China’s statistical agency, show that
coal consumption has been underestimated since 2000, and particularly
in recent years. The revisions were based on a census of the economy
in 2013 that exposed gaps in data collection, especially from small
companies and factories.
Illustrating
the scale of the revision, the new figures add about 600 million tons
to China’s coal consumption in 2012 — an amount equivalent to
more than 70 percent of the total coal used annually by the United
States.
“It’s
been a confusing situation for a long time,” said Ayaka Jones, a
China analyst at the United States Energy Information Administration
in Washington. She said the new data vindicated her earlier analysis
of China’s preliminary statistics, which flagged significantly
increased numbers for coal use and overall energy consumption.
The
new data indicated that much of the change came from heavy industry —
including plants that produce coal chemicals and cement, as well as
those using coking coal, which goes to make steel, Ms. Jones said.
The correction for coal use in electric power generation was much
smaller.
Officials
accepted the need to correct worsening distortions in the old data
but have not commented publicly on the changes, according to Lin
Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research
at Xiamen University in eastern China. Mr. Lin said in a telephone
interview that this was partly because the new figures made it more
complicated to set and assess the country’s clean-energy goals.
“It’s
created a lot of bewilderment,” he said. “Our basic data will
have to be adjusted, and the international agencies will also have to
adjust their databases. This is troublesome because many forecasts
and commitments were based on the previous data.”
When
President Xi Jinping proposed that China’s emissions stop growing
by 2030, he did not say what level they would reach by then. The new
numbers may mean that the peak will be higher, but they also raise
hopes that emissions will crest many years sooner, Mr. Yang, the
climate adviser, said.
“I
think this implies that we’re closer to a peak, because there’s
also been a falloff in coal consumption in the past couple of years,”
he said.
Chinese
energy and statistics agency officials did not respond to faxed
requests for comment on the data revisions.
The
press office of the International Energy Agency said by email that
the organization would revise its own data to reflect China’s
revisions, starting with numbers for 2011 to 2013 that will be
released Wednesday. The agency estimated, based on the new figures,
that China’s carbon dioxide pollution in 2011 and 2012 was 4
percent to 6 percent greater than previously thought.
But
some scientists said the difference could be much larger.
Jan
Ivar Korsbakken, a senior researcher at the Center for International
Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, said that based on his
preliminary analysis, the new data implied that China had released
about 900 million metric tons more carbon dioxide from 2011 to 2013.
That
would be an 11 percent increase in emissions, he said. For
comparison, the International Energy Agency estimated before the
revision that China had emitted 8.25 billion tons of carbon dioxide
from fossil fuels in 2012. Dr. Korsbakken, a physicist, emphasized
that deeper analysis of the new data was needed before firm
conclusions could be drawn.
When
estimating emissions, scientists prefer to account for coal use by
the amount of energy in it rather than by its raw mass, which
includes impurities that end up as ash. Measured in energy terms, Dr.
Korsbakken said, China consumed 10 percent to 15 percent more coal
than the old data had showed from 2005 to 2013, the last year for
which the new and old figures can be compared. The revisions for 2001
through 2004 were smaller.
Economists
have grown increasingly skeptical about the economic data China
publishes, and the revisions open a new episode in the debate over
its energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions.
Today’s
Headlines: Asia Edition
Get
news and analysis from Asia and around the world delivered to your
inbox every day in the Asian morning.
China
burned or otherwise consumed 4.2 billion metric tons in 2013,
according to the new data, and its emissions now far exceed those of
any other country, including the United States, the second-largest
emitter.
This
is not the first time China has underestimated its coal consumption.
In the late 1990s, small coal mines were ordered to close, but many
of them simply stopped reporting their output to the government. For
a time, this created an erroneous impression that China had succeeded
in generating economic growth without increasing emissions.
More
recently, some scientists concluded that China’s emissions were
lower than widely believed because the coal it was using burned less
efficiently than researchers had generally assumed. But Mr. Yang said
that conclusion had been disputed.
The
revised numbers do not alter scientists’ estimates of the total
amount of carbon dioxide in the air. That is measured directly, not
inferred from fuel consumption statistics the way countries’
emissions are usually estimated.
So
if China’s emissions have been much greater than believed,
researchers will want to understand where the extra carbon dioxide
output ended up — for example, how it might have been absorbed in
natural “sinks” like forests or oceans, said Josep G. Canadell,
executive director of the Global Carbon Project, which studies the
sources and flows of greenhouse-gas pollution.
“If
the emissions are partially wrong,” Mr. Canadell said, “we’ll
be wrong in attributing carbon sources and sinks.”
Correction:
November 6, 2015
Because
of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about the release of new
data showing that China burns up to 17 percent more coal per year
than the government had previously disclosed misidentified, in some
editions, the measurement that the figure of 4.2 billion metric tons
applies to. It represents the amount of coal consumed in China in
2013, not the amount of carbon dioxide emitted.
Reuters:
Chinese
coal data cast doubt on historic stalling of world CO2
India's
coal inferno
India's
planned power expansion depends overwhelmingly on coal, with over a
hundred huge new generation units planned by 2030. Sarah Stirk
reports on the nightmare the dash for coal is bringing to once
peaceful rural communities.
Sarah
Stirk
27
January, 2014
Champa's
eyes are surrounded by dark circles and her face is thin and drawn.
It began with a fever, pain in her limbs, and she was then diagnosed
with tuberculosis.
"I
was diagnosed with TB two years ago now. I have been on medication
but I am not getting any better. I have difficulty breathing and even
talking is hard. It has been like this for five or six years - ever
since the plant started, our problems have started too."
Champa
is not alone. She is one of millions of people in India whose health
and lives are being blighted by the country's surge in coal-based
power generation.
170
gigawatts of new coal generation planned by 2022
India
ranks third in the world in the production of carbon dioxide and is
burning more coal than ever before, with 66% of power generated by
coal-fired thermal power plants.
Future
plans are for massive expansion, with India's 12th five-year plan
ending 2017 adding 76GW of coal-fired power capacity. The 13th
five-year plan, ending in 2022, aims to add another 93GW.
This
is a colossal programme - equivalent to more than three times the
UK's entire peak power demand. It represents a response to an
increasing population, a growing middle class hungry for modernity -
and an energy policy that holds coal power as integral to the
development of the country's economy.
100,000
premature deaths a year
But
as India pursues its aggressive path of coal-powered
industrialisation, its leaders are showing themselves willing to
sacrifice millions of people and huge swathes of the country to a
dark and uncertain future.
According
to the The Lancet's Global Burden of Diseases Study outdoor air
pollution - arising from power stations, other industry, transport,
and domestic fuel burning for heat and cooking - is already among the
top ten causes of death in India.
And
while air quality and other environmental regulations do exist in
India, they are rarely enforced. Sarath Guttikunda, chemical engineer
and director at Urban Emissions New Delhi, believes them to be far
weaker than in other countries:
"In
India we do have ambient air quality standards ... But what we have
found is that these regulations lag behind the numbers that we have
seen in Europe, United States and even in China, and there is a lot
of room for improvement."
In
the first ever report focussing on the health impacts of the coal
industry in India, scientists estimate that in 2011-2012, air
pollution from coal-fired power plants alone was responsible for
80,000-115,000 premature deaths.
Diseases
caused by the pollution include 20.9 million asthma attacks,
bronchitis and other severe respiratory conditions, and
cardiovascular disease. These health impacts are estimated to cost
India $3.3 billion to $4.6 billion per year in medical expenses and
lost work days.
India's
'energy capital' - Singrauli
Singrauli,
known as the "energy capital" of the country, is the
industrial hub of north-central India. Straddling Uttar Pradesh and
Madhya Pradesh, it produces 10% of the country's coal-fired power.
Singrauli
was once covered in forest and rich agricultural land, but the
region's coal lies underneath these forests, and they are being
cleared at an alarming rate. Endangered species are pushed further
towards extinction - and tribal communities are swept aside to make
way for the energy juggernaut.
Priya
Pillai, Senior Campaigner for Greenpeace India has worked in the area
for over three years. "There are nine thermal power plants and
eleven operational mines, and this is concentrated in one district.
That's the Singrauli region, and it's because of this that you'll
find the large number of cases of asthma, of tuberculosis, of skin
diseases, of cancer."
Toxic
dustbowls
The
landscape is one of industrial devastation and critical levels of
pollution, recently rated the third most polluted industrial cluster
in the country by the comprehensive environmental pollution index.
Air, water and soil have all been affected.
The
open cast mines that scar the landscape resemble vast craters,
streaked black with coal and trimmed green at the edges with what is
left of the rapidly dwindling forest. Huge dump trucks and cranes
appear miniature in the distance, barely visible through the
poisonous haze.
Milky
white stagnant ash ponds hold the by-product of the industry, fly
ash. Black spiky stalks of dead foliage poke out of the sludge,
testament to its toxicity.
Experts
warn of acute health problems related to coal and the ash that it
produces, conaining toxic heavy metals including mercury, arsenic,
lead, nickel, barium and even radioactive substances such as uranium
or thorium.
Man-made
mountains of mining wastes, excavated and dumped, gradually bury
entire villages. Coal-filled train bunkers and conveyor belts, some
as long as 25km, snake from the mines to thermal power plants.
The
towering stacks dominate the skyline, looming over settlements and
pumping out smoke which can spread its pollution as far as 400 km
away, choking communities below. The air is permanently clouded,
limiting visibility. The smell and taste of coal dominate the senses.
Towering
infernos
Chilika
Dand, in the Sonebhadra district of Singrauli, Uttar Pradesh, is one
of the most critically affected communities. The village of around
12,000 people is surrounded by multiple power plant stacks emitting
putrid smoke, and overlooked by a fully operational open-cast mine
just 50 meters away.
There
is a constant industrial hum of engines revving and the scrape of
metal on stone. Twice daily explosive blasts, and the subsequent
patter and thud of debris, are more reminiscent of the sounds of war
than of development. Few of the concrete rehabilitation blocks escape
cracked walls due to tremors from the blasts.
A
railway line and road are both dedicated to carrying coal. Villagers
claim that at night, filters are removed from the stacks, and ash
falls and settles on rooftops like toxic snow. Many of them have been
moved, often forcibly, numerous times to make way for the industry
that has destroyed their lives.
Manonit
G Ravi, an activist and resident of Chilika Dand shouts over the
noise of engines to make himself heard: "The entire village
vibrates with the blasts. Sometimes they are so big and loud, people
run out of their houses thinking there might be an earthquake."
Sanitation
is desperate, as the allocated plots leave little room for toilets.
In summer, asphyxiating dust fills the air, and in winter and rainy
seasons, there is a constant septic sludge underfoot. The smell, a
mix of human and animal excrement, combined with acrid industrial
pollution makes the air gritty, stinging eyes and making breathing a
struggle.
Disease
is rife
Residents
of Chilika Dand say that illness and disease is rife in the
community, with cancer, kidney failure, diabetes, vitiligo (the
blanching of skin through pigment loss), hair loss and psychosis
widespread.
These
disease are all linked to contaminated water, coal ash, particles in
the air, and the abnormally high levels of mercury present in the
environment. Coal fired power stations are one of the main ways that
mercury is released into the environment.
The
World Health Organization states that even minimal exposure to
mercury may cause health problems, including neurological damage to
unborn fetuses and children. The heavy metal is considered "one
of the top ten chemicals or groups of chemicals of major public
health concern."
Siraj
Un Nissa, a resident of Chilika Dand and mother of eight has
Vitiligo. Her hands, arms and mouth are blanched, and her whole body
is patchy where pigment has been lost.
"I
have been sick for the past eight years ... The dust is making it
hard for us to live here. No electricity. We get it for one hour and
it's gone. We don't have a proper house to live in, just a makeshift
shelter. We don't have anything. No one cares about the poor."
Buried
under mine waste
Jharia,
in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, has almost disappeared. The remote
village is being buried under waste from a nearby mine opened by
Reliance in 2006.
A
thin sliver of green and around 30% of the population is all that
remains of this forest-dwelling community of Harijan people, squashed
against a sheer, slowly encroaching, man-made cliff of debris.
Children
sit quietly on top of huge boulders, the result of an avalanche, and
push bikes loaded up with coal, which they have collected and bagged
up for sale, one of the few ways they manage to survive.
Visibility
is very limited through the dust-filled air, and the sound of a man
chopping wood is intermittently drowned out as dump trucks rumble
past, kicking up dust and adding to the mountainous pile of rock,
where the village used to be.
It
never used to be like this
Bandhu
Saket, resident of Jharia explains how their health has been affected
by the mine: "My youngest grandson gets so unwell, his teeth
start chattering and his eyes enlarge, it feels like he will not get
better ...
"It
never used to be like this. Ever since the companies have come, since
the vehicles have been driving back and forth, since the blasting has
started, illness and disease have been spreading.
"They
dump things in all directions and when it is summertime, with all the
dust, one cannot see anything so how can you expect anything else but
to get sick!"
Bandhu
explains that they used to have a well that provided drinking water
to the village, but the company filled it in, and they are now forced
to drink what they can. "Whatever we find in the drains or
rainwater collected, that is what we drink."
Manbasia,
also from Jharia, is a mother of three. Supporting herself against a
huge rock from the mine, she struggles to control the emotion in her
voice, and speaks shakily of illness and disease in what is left of
her community.
"I
can't see very well, my chest hurts, my feet don't allow me to sit
down or stand up ... We have no one here to help or support us. If
someone is dying, there is no one to look after them or save them.
Who are we meant to turn to?"
Huge
increases in mortality
Dr
R. B. Singh has worked in the area for over 20 years, treating the
local population in their homes, both in the small private practice
that adjoins his home, and the Singrauli District Hospital next door.
A
constant stream of patients waits outside his practice, all needing
attention and treatment.
There
has been a huge increase in death, sickness and disease "since
the time the new industries have come here and the coal mine belt has
progressed", he insists.
"The
patients we see in our new Out Patients Department present themselves
with skin diseases and lung diseases, bronchitis, asthma and
silicosis", he explains. "And because of the contaminated
drinking water, amebiasis and other abdominal ailments have
increased."
"I
have come across bone cancer, mouth cancer, cervical cancer, breast
cancer", he adds. "All these are common here." The
bone cancers mostly occur in children, mouth cancers in adults."
It's
a hospital - but where's the medical equipment?
The
District Hospital next door is in desperate need of facilities. A
dilapidated shell with dark corridors, the maternity ward is
splattered with blood and rainwater drips through cracks in the
ceiling. A solitary brand new unit for premature babies looks oddly
out of place.
There
is no other medical equipment to be seen and a general sense of
confusion and bewilderment prevails. Lights flicker on and off as the
electricity supply fades in and out.
Wards
are crowded but quiet, with beds full, people lying on the floor and
an unmistakable shortage of staff. "We have a problem with a
lack of doctors as most of them qualify and go abroad. They do not
want to work in these small places", says Dr Singh.
Hearts
and lungs
Sarath
Guttikunda, Director at Urban Emissions, New Delhi is a chemical
engineer and air pollution expert. "When you are focusing on
outdoor air pollution two things are really important - one is your
lungs, and other is your heart."
"Among
the respiratory problems, the main one is asthma. People who are
already suffering from asthma are obviously going to get affected
even more, and children and older generation people - they are the
ones that we see are getting affected the most."
Ranjeet
Singh, a primary school teacher in the area, says that sickness is
rife in his pupils, with coughing and sneezing a constant sound in
the classroom. Absenteeism is common due to ill health, and parents
are deeply worried about their children.
"When
I go to teach, there are 216 children. Out of those, if only 100 or
150 of them turn up, it makes us wonder why the children haven't
turned up.
"When
we enquire, the child's guardian tells us that their child has been
unwell or that because we had to go to the hospital, they didn't make
it to school, or that for the past 15 days she's been sick and lying
in bed ... These kind of problems come up a lot."
A
People betrayed
All
over Singrauli, locals speak of sickness, their land and livelihoods
being taken away, and promises of re-housing, education, employment
and healthcare from the industry that haven't materialized.
Rangeet
Gupta is a local activist and youth worker living and working in the
area. He says that after "persistent reminding", the
industry has not delivered the services that it promised.
The
resultis that proper healthcare, among other things, is only
available to people who can afford it, or those who work for the
industry.
"In
this area of ours, there isn't even a decent hospital ... for the
displaced community. They have nothing at all, no schools, no
doctors, no hospital, no roads, not even an arrangement for hygiene
and sanitation. They have just been abandoned."
Champa,
like so many others, has experienced this first-hand, buying her own
medicine when she has the money to do so, and going without treatment
when she can't afford it.
"We
receive no help from the people at the plant at all. Since the health
problems started because of the plant, we have not been given so much
as a single tablet by them or the government."
The
future looks even worse
As
the health epidemic gets more critical, scientists, medical
professionals and campaigners all predict that if India pushes
forward with the planned expansion, and regulations remain
unenforced, the consequences to human life will be even more
devastating.
According
to Sarath Guttikunda, pollution from the power plants operating in
the area has caused close to 100,000 premature deaths. "And if
we are going to triple the number of power plants and don't do
anything about the regulations, we will at least triple this number."
Doctor
Singh warns that the atmosphere in Singrauli will be polluted "to
such a degree that it will not be viable to live here anymore."
Champa, Manbasia and their families, along with hundreds of thousands
of other people, face a future of poverty, sickness and death with no
means of escape.
"Now,
with the dust and smoke bellowing, there are people getting sick",
says Manbasia. "And if you don't have the money, like us, what
do we do? Kill ourselves?"
Wow!
Between coal and tar sands we can really cook the planet!
Coal
Is Regaining A Big Lead As America’s Top Source Of Electricity
25
May, 2013
Back
in 2011 and 2012, natural gas was rapidly rising as a source of
electricity in the U.S., displacing coal. In April 2012, the
two sources were tied, each supply 32% of the America’s energy.
But
environmentalists will be disappointed to hear that coal is now back
to providing 40% of the nation’s electricity output, more than all
other power sources.
According
to the EIA, the U.S. tapped 131,000 megawatt hours worth of coal in
March, compared with just 84,000 for natgas.
Here’s
the chart:
The
reason: natural gas prices have now climbed back to well above $4,
after falling to as low as $2 a year ago. EIA:
Heading
into the 2013 spring shoulder season (between winter and summer),
when demand for electricity typically falls, higher prices for
natural gas reduced the fuel’s share of total generation below the
record levels of last April.
The
good news is that coal still comprises far fewer megawatt hours than
it ever has — since 2009 annual coal generation has fallen well
below its historical 2 million megawatt hour norm.
The
Guardian published an article claiming that renewables are taking
over,carbon emissions are down and implies we are (sic) winning the
war against global warming.
"The
first is that the globe will probably rocket well past peak CO2
levels of 405 parts per million by April and May of this year. This
jump has been pushed along by a baseline massive human CO2 emission
and assisted by a record ocean warming event (El Nino) in the
Equatorial Pacific. Overall, this new yearly record will be more than
55 parts per million higher than peak ‘safe’ levels of 350 parts
per million recommended by some of the world’s top climate
scientists."
Robertscribbler
There is no good news in any of this
Record annual increase of carbon dioxide observed at Mauna Loa for 2015
NOAA,
9
March, 2016
NOAA,
9
March, 2016
The
annual growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at
NOAA’s Mauna
Loa Observatory in
Hawaii jumped by 3.05 parts per million during 2015, the largest
year-to-year increase in 56 years of research.
In
another first, 2015 was the fourth consecutive year that CO2 grew
more than 2 ppm, said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA's Global
Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.
“Carbon
dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of
thousands of years,” Tans said. “It’s explosive compared to
natural processes.”
Levels
of the greenhouse gas were independently measured by NOAA’s Earth
System Research Laboratory and by the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography.
In
February 2016, the average global atmospheric CO2 level stood at
402.59 ppm. Prior to 1800, atmospheric CO2 averaged about 280
ppm.
The
last time the Earth experienced such a sustained CO2 increase
was between 17,000 and 11,000 years ago, when CO2 levels
increased by 80 ppm. Today’s rate of increase is 200 times
faster, said Tans.
The
big jump in CO2 is partially due to the current El
Niño weather
pattern, as forests, plantlife and other terrestrial systems
responded to changes in weather, precipitation and drought. The
largest previous increase occurred in 1998, also a strong El Niño
year. Continued high emissions from fossil fuel consumption are
driving the underlying growth rate over the past several years.
To
track CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa and
global CO2 concentrations visit NOAA’s Greenhouse
Gas Reference Network.
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