{"id":7432,"date":"2014-01-18T11:05:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T16:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7432"},"modified":"2014-01-18T11:08:10","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T16:08:10","slug":"eu-could-cut-40-emissions-with-little-cost-and-we-can-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/eu-could-cut-40-emissions-with-little-cost-and-we-can-too.html","title":{"rendered":"EU could cut 40% emissions with little cost: and we can, too"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIf Europe can do it, the U.S. can do it.\r\nAnd we know\r\n\r\nGeorgia can get a third of its power from wind<\/a>,\r\nand even Spain is north of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida,\r\nwhich have a lot more sun for solar power than anywhere in Europe.\r\nSolar power\r\n\r\nis already winning, even in Georgia<\/a>.\r\nLet’s help it win even faster, plus wind.\r\n

\r\nPR from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) 16 January 2014,\r\n\r\nEU could cut emissions by 40 percent at moderate cost<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe costs of achieving a more ambitious EU climate target are\r\nestimated to be moderate. Upscaling greenhouse-gas emissions\r\nreduction from the current 20 percent by 2020 to 40 percent by 2030\r\nwould be likely to cost less than an additional 0.7 percent of\r\neconomic activity.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd that apparently doesn’t count the additional economic activity\r\nthat would be produced by all those wind and solar deployments,\r\nnot to mention related activities like electric cars.\r\nThis is actually a pessimistic study, because it doesn’t account\r\nfor such likely positive corollaries.\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\nMany options to choose from—wind power could expand sevenfold\r\n<\/strong>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nOptions explored by the study to reach the EU climate target range\r\nfrom renewable energies to nuclear energy and energy-efficiency\r\nincreases. “There’s a wide choice for decision-makers,\r\ndepending on their preferences, so that’s a good thing,” says\r\nDetlef van Vuuren of the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment\r\nAgency and Utrecht University. “Still, most model calculations\r\noptimizing the change of the electricity system project energy from\r\nbiomass to expand threefold, and from wind even sevenfold by\r\n2050.” This would have to be reflected in a potential future\r\nEU target on renewable energy.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nNotice what the study does not propose:\r\n\r\nfracked “natural” gas<\/a>\r\nsuch as the\r\n\r\nmethane Sabal Trail Transmission<\/a>\r\nproposes to gouge in a yard-thick pipeline on a hundred-foot right of way\r\nthrough our wetlands and under our rivers into our fragile drinking-water\r\nFloridan Aquifer.\r\n

The study does propose biomass, which is a bad idea.\r\nWe don’t need\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\nthat Waycross wood pellet plant blowing up to feed bits of our\r\nsouth Georgia pine forests to an English wood burner that also blows up<\/a>.\r\nNothing’s perfect, but at least with this study somebody is trying\r\nto examine what to do to stop climate change by switching to renewable energy.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nOne remarkable finding is that Europe could do without relying on\r\nthe much debated and as yet unproven technology of sequestering CO2\r\nfrom power plant emissions and injecting it into the ground. This is\r\na new result compared to the Roadmap study.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nTake that,\r\n\r\nKemper Coal<\/a>, which has already caused\r\n\r\nmissed earnings<\/a>,\r\n\r\nstock price drops<\/a>, and\r\n\r\nanalyst downgrades<\/a> for Southern Company.\r\nAnd so much for\r\n\r\nSO’s Plant Vogtle nuke boondoggle<\/a>;\r\nthere’s no need for nukes to cut emissions.\r\nEven\r\n\r\nWarren Buffett is moving from nuclear to wind<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nNonetheless, ‘Carbon\r\nCapture and Storage’ (CCS) would be needed to achieve an affordable\r\nworldwide transformation.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nOr would it?\r\nSimply\r\n\r\nswitching to LED lighting<\/a>\r\nwould make a big difference,\r\nand\r\ngetting on with\r\n\r\nconservation and efficiency<\/a>\r\nwould also make a big difference.\r\nActually getting on with it;\r\nnot\r\n\r\nthe squirelled definition Southern Company still uses<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd then there’s the shiny elephant in the room:\r\n\r\nsolar power, which is booming in North Carolina<\/a>,\r\njust out of Southern Company’s restrictive reach.\r\nThe late John Blackburn already demonstrated back in 2010 that\r\n\r\nNorth Carolina can be powered with sun, wind, water, and less methane\r\nthan it uses now<\/a>.\r\nGeorgia can do the same.\r\n

\r\n\r\nThis study isn’t perfect, but it demonstrates that actually studying\r\nenergy generation and emission issues leads to solutions that are\r\nactually quite good.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWhich is way better than\r\nsilly diatribes<\/a> about how we can’t do it without massive\r\ndowngrades in living conditions.\r\n\r\nActually, green solar power is winning<\/a>,\r\nand this new study shows that with wind we can indeed convert the world\r\nto renewable energy and cut emissions enough to greatly affect climate change.\r\n

\r\nLet’s help the sun rise on Georgia, the southeast, and the world!\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Europe can do it, the U.S. can do it. And we know Georgia can get a third of its power from wind, and even Spain is north of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, which have a lot more sun for solar power than anywhere in Europe. Solar power is already winning, even in Georgia. […]","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[120,47,141,216,264,265,6124,104,6687,23,24,55,36],"tags":[210,8738,8719,8745,8753,5190,8754,8755,4913,3031,8701,171,8702,12,7,562,8737,7396,6076,6327,107,7395,8713,6657,8714,6966,6,8727,1013,8716],"class_list":["post-7432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biomass","category-climate-change","category-co2","category-coal","category-energy-conservation","category-energy-efficiency","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-pipeline-2","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-water","category-wind","tag-aquifer","tag-biomass","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-coal","tag-emissions","tag-energy-conservation","tag-energy-efficiency","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-georgia","tag-kemper-coal","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-pik","tag-pipeline","tag-plant-ratcliffe","tag-plant-vogtle","tag-potsdam-institute-for-climate-impact-research","tag-renewable-energy","tag-sabal-trail-transmissions","tag-solar","tag-spectra-energy","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-wetlands","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1VS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7432","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=7432"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7438,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7432\/revisions\/7438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}