{"id":10857,"date":"2014-10-11T12:43:41","date_gmt":"2014-10-11T16:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=10857"},"modified":"2014-10-11T12:49:09","modified_gmt":"2014-10-11T16:49:09","slug":"china-can-go-80-sun-wind-water-power-by-2050-wwf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/china-can-go-80-sun-wind-water-power-by-2050-wwf.html","title":{"rendered":"China can go 80% sun, wind, water power by 2050 –WWF"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n\"300x424<\/a>\r\nIf the most populous country in the world can do it,\r\neven the Sunshine State and the rest of the world can do it.\r\nWith no new nuclear,\r\ndepending heavily on on energy efficiency and conservation,\r\nusing China’s huge number of rooftops for solar power,\r\nwith almost as much wind power, plus a bit more hydropower,\r\nChina can go 80% renewable energy by 2050.\r\nWhile reducing energy use per capita and increasing<\/em>\r\nGDP per capita.\r\nSo this path will not only improve Chinese quality of life\r\nby getting rid of massive pollution by\r\n\r\nreducing emissions 90%<\/a> from\r\notherwise-projected levels; it will also give Chinese citizens\r\nmore money in their pockets.\r\nChina has no more sunshine than the U.S. or much of Canada does,\r\nso there’s no reason the Canada, U.S., and pretty much every country can’t do this, too.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe WWF report,\r\n\r\nChina’s Future Generation: Assessing the Maximum Potential for Renewable Power Sources in China to 2050<\/a>, by\r\nWilliam Chandler, Chen Shiping, Holly Gwin, Lin Ruosida, and Wang Yanjia,\r\nFebruary 2014,\r\ndoes pencil in quite a bit of natural gas,\r\nbut carefully hedges that:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"300x424<\/a>\r\nThe High Renewables scenario assumes that the Chinese government’s\r\ntargets for gas expansion are not fully met and that gas remains\r\nrelatively expensive for some time before seeing significant growth\r\nin China. This scenario limits gas to 17 percent of China’s\r\nelectricity mix by 2050, used only to satisfy power demand during\r\npeaking episodes. If China sourced all of its gas domestically in\r\nthis scenario, the country would need to rely on unconventional gas\r\n(i.e., shale gas and\/or coal bed methane).\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAdmittedly, including gas in this scenario should raise some\r\nconcern. While gas emits fewer carbon emissions than coal at the\r\npoint of combustion, uncertainty about fugitive methane emissions,\r\nassociated particularly with extraction and shipping of gas to\r\npoint-of-use, raises valid questions about the climate benefits of\r\ngas, particularly in the short run. \r\n\r\n\"300x424<\/a>\r\nConcern about fugitive emissions\r\nhas increased given that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate\r\nChange recently revised the potency level of methane showing that it\r\nis 34 times higher than CO2 (on a 100-year time scale).viii\r\nIf\r\nfugitive emissions are not sufficiently controlled, the climate\r\nbenefits would be cancelled out, making gas as environmentally\r\ndetrimental for the climate as coal, or even more so.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nIn other words, keeping some coal generation may be better than\r\nusing fracked methane.\r\nWWF’s scenario for that is shown in the graph above.\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\nEven with coal, total emissions would still be around far less\r\nthan formerly projected and less than currently, because so much power generation would\r\nbe avoided through conservation and efficiency, and so much\r\nwould be generated by sun, wind, and water, as shown in the graph below.\r\n

\r\n\"300x424<\/a>\r\nOr, even better, develop energy storage.\r\n2050 is 36 years from now.\r\nThat’s plenty of time to get on with\r\ncompressed air storage, or better batteries, or something else.\r\n

\r\nSo even just using today’s known technology, China can\r\ngo 80% sun, wind, and water by 2050.\r\nWhich means the real Chinese future can be even better than that.\r\n

\r\nSo can the real U.S. future if we stop letting utilities like FPL\r\nkeep wasting resources including our local land on boondoggles like\r\nFPL’s proposed\r\n\r\nSabal Trail fracked methane pipeline<\/a>\r\nand instead insist they get on with sun, wind, and water power now.\r\nGeorgia Power is at least doing some solar power after many of us\r\ninsisted last year.\r\nFPL can, too.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the most populous country in the world can do it, even the Sunshine State and the rest of the world can do it. With no new nuclear, depending heavily on on energy efficiency and conservation, using China’s huge number of rooftops for solar power, with almost as much wind power, plus a bit more […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216,264,265,18,6124,104,6687,24,55,36],"tags":[8753,8754,8755,1763,8708,8702,12,562,8737,6076,6597,8714,6966,8727,8716],"class_list":["post-10857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-energy-conservation","category-energy-efficiency","category-georgia-power","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-pipeline-2","category-solar","category-water","category-wind","tag-coal","tag-energy-conservation","tag-energy-efficiency","tag-fpl","tag-georgia-power","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-pipeline","tag-sabal-trail-transmission","tag-solar","tag-spectra-energy","tag-water","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-2P7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10857"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10864,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10857\/revisions\/10864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}