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Elected representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a brief speech this week to a group of climate change protesters – 51 of them were arrested for demonstrating illegally – by organizing a sit-in in the offices of the future Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. In a video, Cortez-Ocasio, who will represent New York's 14th district in Congress, can be heard urging protesters to continue their efforts.
"We do not have the choice. We must achieve 100% renewable energy, "she insisted, attracting the delighted applause of the protesters. "There is no other option."
Ocasio-Cortez is only the last far-left Democrat to have pushed the regime entirely renewable. And last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, renewables should provide between 70% and 85% of the world's electricity. by 2050.
There is no doubt that wind and solar energy is politically popular, especially among the millennia that have gathered in the Pelosi office. But the facts show that renewable energies simply can not provide the enormous amounts of energy required by the world.
The fundamental problem is the scale. Renewable energies are not growing fast enough to match the torrid growth in global demand for electricity, let alone moving large quantities of hydrocarbons.
Let's do the math. In 2017, according to the latest BP data, global electricity generation has increased by about 522 terawatt hours. This one year jump is about equal to the historical average.
Between 1997 and 2017, global electricity production increased by an average of 571 terawatt hours per year. In other words, over the last two decades, the world has added electricity each year to a country in Brazil (the country used 590 terawatt hours of juice in 2017).
What would it take to keep pace with growing global demand for electricity using solar energy? We can answer this question by looking at Germany, which has more installed solar capacity than any other country in Europe – around 42,000 megawatts.
In 2017, solar projects in Germany produced 40 terawatt hours of electricity. Thus, the mere fact of staying in step with the growth in electricity demand would require installing a photovoltaic capacity 14 times higher than that of the entire base installed in Germany, and this, every year.
Prefer to use the wind? D & # 39; AGREEMENT. Let's look at China, which has a much higher wind capacity than any other country: about 164,000 megawatts.
To put this in perspective, China alone accounts for about 32% of the world's wind capacity. It also has about twice as much wind capacity as the United States.
In 2017, the Chinese wind sector produced 286 terawatt hours of electricity. Recall that the global electricity use swells about 571 terawatt hours per year.
Thus, to keep pace with growing demand, the world should install twice as much wind capacity as it currently has in China every year.
And keep in mind that electricity consumption is just one aspect of the ever-growing global energy demand. Oil consumption is also increasing.
The International Energy Agency has predicted that by the end of the year, world oil demand will reach a record 100 million barrels a day. This would represent an increase of about 1.8 million barrels per day compared to 2017 figures.
To understand the argument, compare this year's increase in oil demand with global solar production: in 2017, according to BP, global solar production has reached the equivalent of about 2 million barrels of oil .
Thus, by the end of the year, the increase in the amount of oil burned in the world will be almost equivalent to the production of each solar energy generator on the planet.
The striking line is obvious: if countries around the world are serious about reducing carbon dioxide emissions, renewables are not enough. Not far away.
If the goal is to reduce emissions, policymakers around the world must take seriously the only form of scalable electricity generation that generates very little emissions: nuclear power.
Robert Bryce is a senior member of the Manhattan Institute and the producer of the documentary "Juice: How Electricity Explains the World".
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