A team of mechanical engineers at Beihang University, Peking University and the University of Houston has found that it is possible to capture small amounts of electricity by repeatedly squeezing treated luffa sponges. In their study, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group treated sample luffa sponges and measured the electricity they generated when repeatedly squeezed.
Prior research has shown that applying force or stress to certain materials can result in an accumulation of a piezoelectric charge. Prior research has also shown that repeatedly applying and releasing the force or stress can result in the production of a flow of piezoelectricity.
Over the past several years, engineers have investigated the possibility of generating small amounts of piezoelectricity by taking advantage of footsteps, for example, or the movement of clothes as a person walks. Electricity generated and collected in such ways is seen as a possible way to charge personal devices. In this new effort, the research team looked into use of a new kind of material to generate piezoelectricity—luffa sponges.
Luffa sponges are porous shells that are left behind when the fruit of a luffa plant is left to dry. They have been prepared and sold as a commercial product, mainly as a tool for removing dead skin from the body while in the shower. In this new effort, the researchers looked at luffa as a possible tool for generating small amounts of electricity.
They first treated them with chemicals to remove hemicellulose and lignin, leaving behind a cellulose crystal shell. Then, they connected the results to an electrical circuit and began squeezing them over and over by hand. The research team found they were able to generate up to 8 nanoamps of electricity.
They acknowledge that the amount of electricity generated is so small that it likely would not be of much use, but they also suggest that artificially created luffa sponges could be created that would be more efficient. They could also be made a lot bigger to generate useable amounts of electricity.
Dubai, which has historically been largely focused on automobile transportation, is transforming into a human-powered transport city. The LOOP is a 93 km (nearly 58-mile) sustainable pathway for walking and cycling. A comfortable and climate-controlled area that promotes walking and cycling to promote healthy living among the inhabitants of Dubai.
Currently, most of Dubai relies on cars and taxis to reach necessary locales. The LOOP aims to replace this with walking, running, and cycling. The footpath system is intended to reduce the number of vehicles on streets by 80% by 2040, giving rise to a traffic system that considers people first and that provides citizens with safer and healthier modes of transportation. This goes along with Dubai’s goal of improved social infrastructure and facilities for residents.
The indoor green space will integrate services with wellness and leisure facilities to be shared by neighbour hoods and allow human-powered access to all districts of the city. Pocket parks and gardening allotments will help promote social engagement bringing people together to forge a stronger sense of community.
It will be indoors in one of the hottest places on Earth, requiring climate control. How will it be considered sustainable, you ask? The Project will generate electricity through kinetic energy. The human footsteps will be transformed into renewable energy via kinetic paving. The specialty floors move to activate electromagnetic induction generators.
The LOOP in Dubai is an ambitious project that might be a glimpse of the future for humanity. While it would be preferential to have open-air green spaces, renewable-powered enclosed green spaces in hotter climates may be the only way to allow humans to get out of their cars.
Nearly a quarter of the UK’s electricity came from wind turbines in 2020 – making the country the leader among the G20 for share of power sourced from the renewable energy, a new analysis finds.
The UK also moved away from coal power at a faster rate than any other G20 country from 2015 to 2020, according to the results.
And it ranked second in the G20, behind Germany, for the proportion of electricity sourced from both wind and solar in 2020.
However, Britain is still lagging behind when it comes to fossil gas, according to analysis by the climate and energy think tank Ember.
The country sourced 37 per cent of its electricity from fossil gas in 2020, placing it ninth in the G20 and above the global average of 23 per cent.
“It’s crazy how much wind has grown in the UK and how much it has offset coal, and how it’s starting to eat at gas,” Dave Jones, Ember’s global lead analyst, told The Independent.
But it is important to bear in mind that “we’re only doing a great job by the standards of the rest of the world”, he added.
UK is second behind Germany in G20 for share of electricity sourced from wind and solar (Ember)
Ember’s Global Electricity Review notes that the world’s power sector emissions were two per cent higher in 2020 than in 2015 – the year that countries agreed to slash their greenhouse gas pollution as part of the Paris Agreement.
Power generated from coal fell by a record amount from 2019 to 2020, the analysis finds. However, this decline was greatly facilitated by lockdowns introduced to stop the spread of Covid-19, which stifled electricity demand, the analysts say.
Coal is the most polluting of the fossil fuels. The UK government hopes to convince all countries to stop building new coal-fired power stations at Cop26, a climate conference that is to be held in Glasgow later this year.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has also called for all countries to end their “deadly addiction to coal”.
At a summit held earlier this month, he described ending the use of coal in electricity generation as the “single most important step” to meeting the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
“There is definitely a concern that, in the pandemic year of 2020, coal hasn’t fallen as fast as it needed to,” said Mr Jones.
“There is concern that, once electricity demand returns, we won’t be seeing that decline in coal anymore.”
Natural gas-fired generation continues to provide much of the electricity in the UK, but renewable power in total at times has taken the lead spot in the country’s generation mix over the past several months. The country has moved almost entirely away from coal, which a decade ago teamed with natural gas to provide three-quarters of Great Britain’s power.
The UK government in 2019 passed laws that require the country to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, beyond the previous target of at least an 80% reduction from 1990 levels. The UK also plans to phase out all coal-fired generation by 2025. Chris Skidmore, the UK’s Energy and Clean Growth Minister when the legislation was passed, at the time said, “We’re leading the world yet again in becoming the first major economy to pass new laws to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050 while remaining committed to growing the economy—putting clean growth at the heart of our modern Industrial Strategy. We’re pioneering the way for other countries to follow in our footsteps driving prosperity by seizing the economic opportunities of becoming a greener economy.”
Boris Johnson, the UK’s prime minister, earlier in November announced plans for what his government has called a “green industrial revolution,” which includes expanding the country’s use of nuclear and hydrogen power. Johnson said the 10-point plan included as part of the initiative reiterates previous pledges to end the sale of fossil fuel-powered vehicles by 2030, and quadruple the amount of offshore wind power capacity within a decade. Though environmentalists praised much of the plan, some say its does not move fast enough to end the use of fossil fuels.
Carbon Price a Key
Global energy analysts have said the UK, even with continued reliance on some thermal power, has “cleaned up” its electricity mix faster than any other major world economy. Grant Wilson, a lecturer at the University of Birmingham who focuses on energy issues, told POWER that’s in large part due to the country’s price on carbon, now in place for several years, which accelerated the country’s move away from coal (Figure 1).
1. The Drax Power Station, with a generation capacity of nearly 4 GW, is the UK’s largest single-site power generator, and currently home to Europe’s largest decarbonization project. The Drax Group is converting the long-time coal-fired power plant in North Yorkshire to run on sustainable biomass. Courtesy: Drax Group
Wilson pointed out that “2019 saw the annual total for coal generation drop below solar and into seventh place [among all generation types] for the first time. Britain’s renewables also generated more electricity than coal and natural gas combined over a month for the first ever time in August [2019].” That trend has gotten stronger over the past year; government data released in October of this year showed that renewables’ share of UK electricity generation climbed to 44.6% in the second quarter of 2020, up nine percentage points on the year.
Wilson also noted that demand for power in the UK has trended downward for more than a decade, as the country has embraced energy efficiency measures. Wilson, along with Iain Staffell of Imperial College London, and Noah Godfrey of the University of Birmingham, noted what they called a “remarkable shift in Britain’s electrical system during the 2010s. The amount of electricity consumed fell by nearly 15% between 2010 and 2019, with the economy using 50 terawatt hours (TWh) less electricity in 2019 than it did in 2010.” Wilson said, “Britain now has the cleanest electrical supply it has ever had.”
Providing for Baseload Power
A caveat for the UK’s transition away from fossil fuels has been that any changes to the country’s generation mix must still provide for reliable sources of baseload power. While coal-fired generation supplied less than 2% of Britain’s electricity last year, natural gas today provides about 40% of the nation’s electricity. Wind power is in second place, supplying nearly 21% of the UK’s electrical demand in the past year, up from just 3% in 2010.
David McLeod, ULC Technologies UK head of business development, told POWER, “By 2030, it is likely that we will see a significant growth in wind and solar-powered energy, while the conversation around hydrogen is just getting started. Natural gas is still a major part of the UK’s power generation, and it will take some time for it to officially phase out. As the UK moves away from fossil fuels for power generation though, technology will be essential in assisting with this transition to ensure safety and efficiency.”
McLeod said his company plans to launch an unmanned aerial services program in 2021. Its “mission is to help utility and energy companies solve problems through the application of our unmanned aircraft technology. This includes looking at exciting applications for offshore wind companies to increase safety and reduce maintenance costs as the growth of renewable energy continues. Unmanned aircraft are great for capturing tremendous amounts of inspection data with very low risk, and that goes together with the need for machine learning (i.e. artificial intelligence) to process the data.”
As McLeod noted, changes in the UK’s power generation system enhance the need to introduce new technologies. Construction recently began on the first new synchronous condenser in the UK, under the National Grid’s Pathfinder program. The condenser, being built in Wales, is expected to provide critical support services to stabilize the grid as the UK moves away from thermal power generation and increases its use of renewable resources, including solar power (Figure 2) and energy storage.
2. The 72.2-MW Shotwick Solar Park was the largest solar installation in the UK when it was commissioned in 2016. Courtesy: British Solar Renewables
The UK government in late May threw its support behind plans to develop the country’s largest solar park, a £450 million ($555 million) joint venture between Hive Energy and Wirsol Energy. The Cleve Hill Solar Park, designed with 350 MW of generation capacity, will use 880,000 solar panels and be located near the towns of Faversham and Whitstable on the north Kent coast.
Flexible Reserve Capacity
Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a global investment manager focused on lower-carbon and renewable energy infrastructure investment, has taken a lead role in the UK’s energy transition, including the National Grid program. The company over the past two years has developed, built, or acquired several assets including those dealing with flexible generation, grid support infrastructure, and demand response.
Those projects include more than 300 MW of flexible reserve capacity either operational or under construction across 21 sites in Wales, Scotland, and England. The company also acquired Flexitricity, among the first of a group of demand-response operators in Great Britain. Flexitricity has participated in UK power markets for more than 10 years, looking at customer demand management as decarbonization accelerates. The group works to create cost savings for energy consumers, while enhancing grid support during periods of high demand and higher power prices. The Flexitricity virtual power plant includes an aggregated 540 MW of distributed flexible power from a range of assets owned by customers across the UK.
ESG Impact
Rory Quinlan, who co-founded Quinbrook along with David Scaysbrook in 2015, told POWER the company “has specialized in the creation of new infrastructure assets that deliver real and tangible ESG [environmental, social, and governance] impact on behalf of its investors. Quinbrook is operating at the forefront of the accelerating energy transition to achieve ‘net zero’ emissions from the UK’s energy supply system.” Quinlan said Quinbrook “is currently constructing one of the UK’s largest diversified portfolios of reserve power assets for managing intermittency challenges arising from the rapid growth in wind and solar.”
One business Quinbrook has invested in is Velox Power, which comprises a diversified portfolio of reserve power and grid support infrastructure assets providing secure, dispatchable, peaking power using modern, high-efficiency gas engines. The technologies within the portfolio include gas peaking, landfill gas, and coal mine methane. More than 96% of the 357.5-MW portfolio within the Velox Power business have secured 15-year Capacity Market contracts.
Quinlan said the synchronous condenser is an important technological piece to support renewable generation resources. He told POWER that a “synchronous condenser is an electric generator/motor whose rotor can spin freely. Synchronous condensers are applying an established century-old technology to support the current operation of and transition to the power system of the future. With an increase in renewable penetration and the retirement of nuclear plants, generation from synchronous sources such as coal, gas, and nuclear is expected to decrease significantly in the future. This is creating increasing instability of system frequency and local voltage levels, which synchronous condensers are able to help control without displacing renewable energy generation.”
Challenges Await
Mark Chadwick, managing director of Sustainability Solutions at ENGIE Impact, told POWER that the UK’s transition to more renewable resources comes with challenges. “Renewable sources will continue to become a growing trend over the next several years. However, renewable sources typically connect to the grid with technologies that are not synchronous machines, which may have implications on the technical characteristics of the system, such as lower inertia, lower short-circuit power, strong fluctuations due to RES [renewable energy system] variability, and so on. These can pose challenges so it’s important to consider all the variables when transitioning to renewables.
“We’ll also expect to see new grid portions based on entirely new technologies. For instance, offshore wind is expected to become a significant part of the generation matrix for the UK and other countries that have access to the North Sea.” Chadwick added, “As the grid becomes more digitized over the next decade, it will offer an opportunity to increase the level of intelligence between the various agents that compose the power system and support the balancing function to ensure the equilibrium of supply and demand is maintained.
“For example, consider EV charging—a misalignment between the actual RES output and what was forecasted can have significant efficiency and cost implications. Overall, to truly transform the UK power grid, there must be better cross-sector collaboration among public and private entities in order to simplify the changes that will need to be made, particularly as it relates to the impact on consumers. We can envisage a power system that is digitally controlled, with connected devices such as electric vehicles able to provide grid balancing services by charging and discharging as required. We can also envisage a more decentralized system, with a far greater proportion of energy consumers also being producers.”
Migration to Renewables
CIL Management Consultants, an international investment advisory group with offices in London and also Chicago, Illinois, in a report provided to POWER said that for the UK to reach its carbon emissions reduction goals the country’s “energy generation will have to migrate to renewable sources. Energy distribution, storage and exploitation will need to adapt to accommodate this shift. [The country] will need to develop technology to capture and store carbon dioxide.” The group said it “is currently not possible to capture and store carbon on a large scale. In order to meet net zero by 2050, CCS [carbon capture and storage] will need to be operational by the mid-2020s and operating at scale by the 2030s.”
Said Quinbrook’s Quinlan: “The drive to reduce the carbon intensity of power generated and consumed in the UK is economy-wide [and] this rapid transition of power supply infrastructure is expected to create attractive investment opportunities featuring both regular cash yield and capital appreciation.” He said “the next three to five years will be a critical phase” for the country’s energy transition as investors sort out which technologies will have lead roles in UK power generation.
Scientists have found the first material that displays a much sought-after property at room temperature.
It is superconducting, which means electrical current flows through it with perfect efficiency – with no energy wasted as heat.
At the moment, a lot of the energy we produce is lost as heat because of electrical resistance.
So room temperature “superconducting” materials could revolutionise the electrical grid.
Until this point, achieving superconductivity has required cooling materials to very low temperatures. When the property was discovered in 1911, it was found only at close to the temperature known as absolute zero (-273.15C).
Since then, physicists have found materials that superconduct at higher – but still very cold – temperatures.
The team behind this latest discovery says it’s a major advance in a search that has already gone on for a century.
“Because of the limits of low temperature, materials with such extraordinary properties have not quite transformed the world in the way that many might have imagined,” said Dr Ranga Dias, from the University of Rochester, in New York State.
“However, our discovery will break down these barriers and open the door to many potential applications.”
Dr Dias added that room temperature superconductors “can definitely change the world as we know it”.
The scientists observed the superconducting behaviour in a carbonaceous sulphur hydride compound at a temperature of 15C.
However, the property only appeared at extremely high pressures of 267 billion pascals – about a million times higher than typical tyre pressure. This obviously limits its practical usefulness.
So Dr Dias says the next goal will be to find ways to create room temperature superconductors at lower pressures, so they will be economical to produce in greater volume.
These materials could have many other applications. These include a new way to propel levitated trains – like the Maglev trains that “float” above the track in Japan and Shanghai, China. Magnetic levitation is a feature of some superconducting materials.
Another application would be faster, more efficient electronics.
“With this kind of technology, you can take society into a superconducting society where you’ll never need things like batteries again,” said co-author Ashkan Salamat of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
A single change in our approach to energy efficiency can enable more people around the world to stay cool, benefit consumers, and flatten the curve on cooling-related energy demand and emissions.
Air conditioning (AC) may be cooling us, but it’s cooking our planet.
Countries around the world have experienced scorching temperatures this summer. This August was the second hottest on record. Global warming and more intense summer heat waves, coupled with increased urbanisation and rising incomes, are driving a dramatic increase in demand for AC units.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that the number of ACs in operation globally will increase from 1.6 billion today to 5.6 billion by 2050. Over the next 30 years, ten air conditioners will be sold every second.
Air conditioners contribute significantly to the greenhouse-gas emissions fueling climate change, both directly, owing to the hydrofluorocarbon (HFC)-based refrigerants they contain, and indirectly, given the energy they consume.
Over the next 30 years, ten air conditioners will be sold every second.
A recent report by the IEA and the United Nations Environment Program is the latest to highlight the threat, describing it as “one of the most critical and often neglected climate and development issues of our time.”
The 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Destroy the Ozone Layer aims to reduce HFC production and consumption by over 80 per cent by 2047. If implemented, this could avoid 0.4°C of global warming this century. But while the Kigali Amendment provides a pathway to address refrigerants, the world must now tackle the problem of air conditioners’ energy intensity.
Most AC units sold today are 2-3 times less efficient than the best commercially available products. This is largely because consumers buy the lowest-priced units, with little or no understanding of the lifecycle cost implications of their purchase. The IEA estimates that widely diffusing the most efficient air conditioners on the market today could cut cooling energy demand by half.
While the AC industry needs to continue making units more efficient, we can, and must, take steps to drive the adoption of the best products already available. That means flipping the way we address the efficiency issue, which in turn will require policymakers and the industry to come together and show bold leadership.
One way to boost energy efficiency is through policy intervention, specifically regarding minimum energy-performance standards (MEPS). Currently, MEPS are set just above the level of the worst-performing AC products, in order to keep them out of the market and provide some protection to consumers.
But with market growth continuing to accelerate, policymakers should instead set MEPS with reference to the best commercially available products – meaning that the MEPS would be just below the technology ceiling, rather than just above the technology floor.
This significant change would not only protect consumers; it would also considerably reduce the lifecycle costs of owning and operating air conditioners. At the same time, it would still allow sufficient space for product competition, thereby bringing down the purchase price of more efficient units.
Such a policy could emulate and build on Japan’s Top Runner program, launched in 1999, which effectively advances the country’s AC market while delivering energy savings and reducing lifecycle costs. The scheme encourages consumers to purchase the best-performing available units through a labeling program, which in turn increases economies of scale and lowers costs. And by demanding more efficient AC technologies from the market, Top Runner also bolsters investor confidence.
Targeting maximum efficiency in this way worldwide would decrease the lifecycle cost for consumers of owning an AC unit by a factor of two to three and eliminate the need for over 1,300 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity globally. It would also avoid 157-345 gigatons of carbon dioxideemissions over the next four decades.
Establishing policies based upon the best commercially available AC products rather than the most commonly sold ones would thus avoid emissions, reduce government spending on power generation, and save consumers money, all while continuing to incentivise the market to develop better performing products.
Better yet, such a policy shift would prepare the market for AC products with even greater efficiency potential that are already on the horizon. In 2018, an international coalition launched the Global Cooling Prize to identify a residential room air conditioner that uses dramatically less energy and contains refrigerants with little to no effect on the climate.
Eight teams have developed technologies that potentially could have five times less climate impact than standard AC units on the market today. Following testing this fall, one winner will be awarded a prize of $1 million in March 2021 for their innovative cooling solution.
Scaling such a cooling technology globally could save consumers $1 trillion in operational costs in the next 30 years, and avoid up to 0.5°C of warming by the end of the century. And that includes only the residential sector.
A single change in our approach to energy efficiency can enable more people around the world to stay cool, benefit consumers, and flatten the curve on cooling-related energy demand and emissions. If we want climate-friendly AC, we need to leap toward the technology ceiling.
Iain Campbell is a senior fellow at the Rocky Mountain Institute. Caroline Winslow is an associate with the Buildings Team at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffered its most extensive coral bleaching event in March, with scientists fearing the coral recovers less each time after the third bleaching in five years.
February 2020 was the hottest month on record since records began in 1900, Professor Terry Hughes, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, told Reuters Newsagency.
“We saw record-breaking temperatures all along the length of the Great Barrier Reef, there wasn’t a cool portion in the north, or a cool portion in the south this time around,” Professor Hughes said. “The whole Barrier Reef was hot so the bleaching we have seen this year is the most extensive so far.”
Professor Hughes added that he was now almost certain that the Reef was not going to recover to what it looked like even five years ago, not to mention 30 years ago. If the global warming trends continued the Great Barrier Reef would be destroyed, he said.
“We will have some sort of tropical ecosystem, but it won’t look like coral reef, there might be more seaweed, more sponges, a lot less coral, but it will be a very different ecosystem.”
The Great Barrier Reef, covering 348,000 square kilometres was UNESCO world heritage listed in 1981 as the most extensive and spectacular coral reef ecosystem on the planet, according to the UNESCO website.
Data centres processing and storing the world’s data already use around 1% of the electricity we generate, according to the IEA.
Computing is expected to account for up to 8% of global power demand by 2030.
The emissions associated with everyday computing could be surprisingly high.
A stone’s throw from a power station on the barren outskirts of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, a grey warehouse surrounded by metal containers hums to the sound of money.
Inside, hundreds of computer servers work continuously to solve complicated mathematical equations generating the digital currency Bitcoin – burning enough electricity to power tens of thousands of homes in the process.
“Any high-performance computing … is energy intensive,” explained Joe Capes of global blockchain company The Bitfury Group, which operates the facility in Tbilisi.
Cryptocurrencies are one of several new technologies, like artificial intelligence and 5G networks, that climate experts worry could derail efforts to tackle global warming by consuming ever-growing amounts of power.
Data centres processing and storing data from online activities, such as sending emails and streaming videos, already account for about 1% of global electricity use, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Sending one less ‘thank you’ email a day could save 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year. Image: Statista
That’s about the same amount of electricity that Australia consumes in a year.
But as societies become more digitalised, computing is expected to account for up to 8% of the world’s total power demand by 2030, according to some estimates, raising fears this could lead to the burning of more fossil fuels.
“If we don’t take into account the carbon footprint, we are going to have a climate change nightmare coming from information technology,” said Babak Falsafi, a professor of computer and communication science at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne.
Efficient Data
One solution is to improve the efficiency of data centres, which is something operators are naturally prone to do since electricity accounts for a large share of their running costs, according to data experts.
“As a rule of thumb, a megawatt costs a million dollars per year … This obviously catches management’s attention,” said Dale Sartor, who oversees the U.S. Department of Energy’s Center of Expertise for Data Centers in Berkeley, California.
Energy demand from data centres in the United States has remained largely flat over the past decade as improvements in computing have allowed processors to do more with the same amount of power, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
But that is set to change, predict tech analysts.
The 50-year-old trend known as Moore’s Law, which has seen computer chips double in capacity every two years, is expected to slow down as it becomes harder to add any more transistors to a chip.
Some companies have been looking at other ways to make savings.
In Georgia, where most electricity is generated by hydropower, Bitfury deployed a system to reduce the energy needed to cool down its heating servers.
Cooling can account for up to half of a data centre’s total energy use, the company says.
While some of its processors are still cooled with outside air, others are immersed inside metal tanks filled with a special liquid with a low boiling point.
As the liquid boils, the vapour transfers heat away from the processors, keeping them fresh and allowing the company to do away with fans and save water.
“Air is free … but it is not efficient,” explained Capes, who heads Bitfury’s liquid cooling technology subsidiary, adding that the system consumes 40% less electricity than traditional air cooling solutions.
Others have taken similar steps.
A Google data centre in Finland uses recycled seawater to reduce energy use while some companies have opened facilities near the Arctic Circle to benefit from naturally cold air.
But improving efficiency “can only get you so far”, said Elizabeth Jardim, a senior corporate campaigner at environmental group Greenpeace. “At some point you will have to address the type of energy that is powering the facility.”
Tech giants including Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have committed to using only renewable energy but some still use fossil fuels, and more needs to be done to bring others on board, she said.
Jardim suggested governments enact policies to incentivise tech companies to procure green energy and increase transparency around the data sector’s carbon footprint.
Less Cat Videos
Meanwhile, internet users can also play a role by switching to greener companies or simply reducing their data use, said Jardim.
“Right now data pretty much is equivalent to energy, so the more data something takes the more energy you can assume it’s using,” she said.
Simply sending a photo by email can emit about the same amount of planet-warming gases as driving a car for a kilometre, said Luigi Carafa, executive director of the Climate Infrastructure Partnership, a Barcelona-based non-profit.
“The problem is we don’t really see this, so we don’t perceive it as a problem at all,” he said by phone.
A 2019 study by energy supplier OVO Energy found that if Britons sent one less email a day the country could reduce its carbon output by the equivalent of more than 81,000 flights from London to Madrid.
Global online video viewings alone generated as many carbon emissions as the whole of Spain in 2018, according to French think tank The Shift Project.
“People can already reduce their carbon emissions today if they stop watching cat videos,” said Falsafi, the Lausanne professor, who heads the university’s research centre for sustainable computing, EcoCloud.
“Unfortunately, they are neither aware of the issue nor incentivised to reduce carbon emissions.”
The 36 countries that make up the OECD bloc of developed nations have reached a milestone in the production of green energy. For the first time, electricity derived from renewable sources has outstripped that generated by burning coal.
Image: International Energy Agency
Figures from the International Energy Agency for 2018 show renewables as an energy source just edging out coal. When taken as a total across the bloc, renewables were used to produce 2,896 terawatt hours of electricity, while burning coal produced 2,863 terawatt hours.
It’s a tight margin but the chart above shows a clear trend. Coal is in rapid decline across the OECD, while renewable sources of energy are surging. Gas is now the most common source of fuel for energy production across the OECD. It’s cleaner than coal but still a fossil fuel that contributes to global warming.
Various sources of renewable energy have given OECD nations the ability to rapidly scale production. Hydro power is by far the leading source, with more than half the bloc’s total supply coming from water-powered production.
Image: International Energy Agency
Wind farms are the second largest source of green energy, producing 23% of the OECD’s supply. Solar power is another major contributor. The falling cost and increased efficiency of solar panels has pushed up their share of renewable electricity production in the OECD to 8.4%.
A global shift
The dash for renewables is not confined to developed nations. Around the world new generating capacity is being installed at a phenomenal rate, driven mainly by wind and solar. In the middle of 2018 the world reached a landmark, with more than 1,000 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity online, according to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
Image: BNEF
The problem with coal
Despite the increase in renewables, more coal than ever is being burned to generate electricity.
Image: International Energy Agency
Coal power generation increased 3% in 2018, and for the first time topped the 10,000 TWh mark, according to the International Energy Agency. Coal is still the largest fuel source for generating electricity, accounting for 38% of total global production.
The growth in coal-fired production was mainly in Asia, particularly in China and India. Investment in coal-fired power plants declined by nearly 3%, however, to the lowest level since 2004. India and China are also cancelling and delaying plans for new coal-fired power stations.
To hit targets for a sustainable global energy supply, coal-fired production needs to fall dramatically, and quickly, with an associated exponential rise in renewable production, as the chart below from the IEA illustrates.
Image: International Energy Agency
At the current rate of change, the world is set to miss sustainable development targets, but an accelerated rate of investment in renewable capacity could yet tip the balance in favour of greener energy.
