http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/16/renewable-energy-surge-behind-unprecedented-halt-global-carbon-emissions
[links in on-line article]
Published on Wednesday, March 16, 2016
by Common Dreams
Renewable Energy Surge Behind Unprecedented Halt in Global Carbon Emissions
International Energy Agency touts findings as evidence that global
emissions and economic growth has been 'decoupled'
by Lauren McCauley, staff writer
A growing worldwide shift to renewable energy has played a "critical
role" in stalling global carbon emissions, the world's leading energy
analysts declared on Wednesday.
According to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) preliminary
analysis of 2015 data, for the second year in a row, the amount of
carbon emitted from the world's power sector remained essentially flat
at 32.1 billion tons.
Declining coal use in China and the United States, the world's two
biggest emitters of carbon, and a surge in new renewable energy
production were credited for driving that trend.
According to the figures, which will be included in the IEA's annual
World Energy Outlook report at the end of June, renewables "accounted
for roughly 90 percent of new electricity generation in 2015," with wind
alone producing more than half of that new power.
Those trends offset rising emissions in a number of developing countries
in Asia and the Middle East as well as a "moderate increase" in Europe.
At the same time, the global economy grew more than 3 percent, prompting
the agency to declare that the "decoupling of global emissions and
economic growth" has been officially "confirmed."
Though environmentalists and other analysts agree that the "endless
growth" demanded by a capitalist system is not sustainable, the findings
nonetheless underscore the viability of a global shift to clean
energy—and put an end to many of the arguments against such a change.
"The new figures confirm last year’s surprising but welcome news: we now
have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from
economic growth," said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.
"Coming just a few months after the landmark COP21 agreement in Paris,
this is yet another boost to the global fight against climate change,"
Birol added.
The group notes that in the more than 40 years since they have been
tracking carbon emissions, there have only been four periods during
which emissions stood still or declined. With the exception of the past
two years, those stalls all occurred during periods of global economic
slowdowns.
The report notes that in the U.S., carbon emissions fell two percent in
2015—a decline which was largely attributed to the switch from coal to
natural gas. However, natural gas production releases significant
emissions of methane, which scientists say is an even more potent
greenhouse gas than carbon. The preliminary data does not factor in
emissions of methane.
_______________________________________________
Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list
Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org
http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel