It appears that China has been rather aggressive in its renewal energy growth, in particular for wind (82%) and solar (85%) technologies. Nonetheless, there has also been an increase in fossil fuel consumption such as natural gas (19%) and coal (8%).
On the other hand, while the US may be experiencing slower growth in its renewable energy sector relative to China, the US has been able to curb fossil fuel consumption for coal and oil at a 2% annual rate of reduction.
As we consider the issue of energy use and its impact on climate change, the statistics could help provide a glimpse of the different approaches that some of the major economies have undertaken to reduce carbon emissions, either through renewable energy promotion, or by reduction of fossil fuel consumption.
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| Chart by Bill Marsh of New York Times Information source from US Energy Information Administration |
Hi Joon, great blog and a really interesting post. It demonstrates the difficulties when handling such large amounts of data and the number of variable you have to consider. It will be interesting to see how the figures for natural gas change over the next few years! I found your posts on fracking interesting and thought you might want to look over mine for comparison.
ReplyDeletehttp://energyenquiry.blogspot.co.uk/
Our blogs definitely have a similar focus so I am really interested to see what different topics we write about over the next few weeks!
Hannah
Hi Hannah, thank you for the very kind compliment. I agree with you fully on the challenges in interpreting huge chunks of data. Another piece of information that might be useful is the energy intensity (kJ/GDP$) that provides one with a rough measure of an economy's efficiency in energy use.
DeleteBy the way, it's been a pleasure reading your blog as well. I find that it provided a very comprehensive picture of both sides of the fracking argument.
I'll probably be writing on biomass or nuclear shortly, do stay tuned!
Hi Joon, great blog with analytical posts!
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting comparison you provide in this post, however what I find problematic considering increase in renewable energy sources/ decrease in fossil fuel usage, is how it feeds into the electricity grid. An important example here is Germany, after the boom of solar power implementation, which provides difficulties on exceptionally sunny days, because the grid cannot cope with the input. Simultaneously, a reliance on fossil fuels still remains on days with little incoming solar radiation. In short: a supply and demand problem. This is an issue often forgotten in providing data on sources of energy production, distorting data in relation to the actual effectiveness of these measures.
What is your take on this, and my 'hope for the future': the smart electricity grid, with cars as storage?
Hi Larissa!
DeleteThank you for the very kind comment. The idea of transferring excess capacity to cars is an interesting idea! With the relevant infrastructure in place, it would certainly help reduce reliance on fossil fuel in both the power generation and transport sector.
In the short term, perhaps we can also consider pricing mechanisms to help better estimate power demand and facilitate infrastructure planning. As an example, the industry sector could be charged a tiered pricing for electricity use, where a "reserved capacity" is priced slightly lower than a "on-demand" electricity use. This will motivate industry users to better estimate their energy consumption and avoid additional charges from power usage beyond the dedicated electrical supply.
The pricing mechanism is a strategy adopted by the power grid in Singapore to enhance efficient use of its transmission network. Some info can be found here for reference.
http://www.ema.gov.sg/media/files/info_papers/101202/UPLOAD_20061122122103.pdf