#Renewal Energy

[lancsgreenwitch]

Embrace the Light: Powerful Winter Solstice Spell for Renewal

The Winter Solstice, also known as Yule, marks the longest night of the year and the return of the sun’s light. As we transition from darkness to light, it’s a perfect time to reflect on the themes of hope, growth, and renewal. This simple spell invites positive energy into your life, helping you embrace the warmth and light as the days begin to lengthen once more. Purpose of the Spell This…

[venusiansex]

with the vernal equinox yesterday and the new moon in aries today, we are starting off the new astrological year strong as fuck.

use this renewal energy to:

ignite your passions

let your creative energy flow

take initiative

remain balanced and watch out for headaches/burnouts

have some rough sex lol

[districtfourmermaid]

It's interesting how much more heavily guarded and policed District 11 is than 12, and I feel like it's about their industries and size.

District 11's geography and population are way bigger than 12. It takes more to control that.

However, it's probably more likely that unrest in your agriculture District would be much worse than the coal District. The Capitol needs fruit and other products, but probably not coal so much. I've often wondered why District 12 is still mining coal at all. Surely, with District 5 being Power as of the movies and the advancements in technology by then, the Capitol runs on some renewable source. They have a hydroelectric dam in the Mockingjay movie. And solar and wind are, as they say, ready to go whenever.

I suspect they keep 12 mining coal to keep the Districts subordinated, and the Districts (maybe aside from 5) run on the old-fashioned coal power. The Capitol, if they don't need coal, could just get rid of 12, but having a backup in case 5 rebels doesn't hurt. And if the people in the Districts use coal for power, they can be easily controlled by real or manufactured shortages or withholding. You can't tell the people of 8 that there's an energy shortage due to lack of sunlight, but you can say the coal is running low. And keeping the people of 12 around may have its use, so may as well keep them working themselves to death.

[hope-for-the-planet]

From the article:

“Texas has the most solar and wind of any state, not because Republicans in Texas love renewables, but because it’s the cheapest form of electricity there,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, a climate research nonprofit. The next top three states for producing wind power — Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas — are red, too. [...] “You picture a web, and we’re taking scissors or a machete or something, and chopping one part of that web out,” said Elizabeth Sawin, the director of the Multisolving Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes climate solutions. “There’s this resilience of having all these layers of partners.” All told, climate progress has been unfolding on so many fronts for so many years — often without enough support from the federal government — that it will persist regardless of who occupies the White House. “This too shall pass, and hopefully we will be in a more favorable policy environment in four years,” Hausfather said. “In the meantime, we’ll have to keep trying to make clean energy cheap and hope that it wins on its merits.”

[reasonsforhope]

On her fingers, Chicago’s Chief Sustainability Officer Angela Tovar counted the city buildings that will soon source all of their power from renewable energy: O’Hare International Airport, Midway International Airport, City Hall.

[Note: This is an even huger deal than it sounds like. Chicago O'Hare International Airport is, as of 2023, the 9th busiest airport in the world.]

Chicago’s real estate portfolio is massive. It includes 98 fire stations, 81 library locations, 25 police stations and two of the largest water treatment plants on the planet — in all, more than 400 municipal buildings.

It takes approximately 700,000 megawatt hours per year to keep the wheels turning in the third largest city in the country. Beginning Jan. 1, every single one of them will come solely from clean, renewable energy, mostly sourced from Illinois’ newest and largest solar farm. The move is projected to cut the Windy City’s carbon footprint by approximately 290,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, the equivalent of taking 62,000 cars off the road, the city said.

Chicago is one of several cities across the country that are not only shaking up their energy mix but also taking advantage of their bulk-buying power to spur new clean energy development.

The city — and much of Illinois — already has one of the cleanest energy mixes in the country, with over 50% of the state’s electricity coming from nuclear power. But while nuclear energy is considered “clean,” carbon-free energy, it is not considered renewable.

Chicago’s move toward renewable energy has been years in the making. The goal of sourcing the city’s energy purely from renewable sources was first established by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2017. In 2022, Mayor Lori Lightfoot struck a deal with electricity supplier Constellation to purchase renewable energy from developer Swift Current Energy for the city, beginning in 2025.

Swift Current began construction on the 3,800-acre, 593-megawatt solar farm in central Illinois as part of the same five-year, $422 million agreement. Straddling two counties in central Illinois, the Double Black Diamond Solar project is now the largest solar installation east of the Mississippi River. It can produce enough electricity to power more than 100,000 homes, according to Swift Current’s vice president of origination, Caroline Mann.

Chicago alone has agreed to purchase approximately half the installation’s total output, which will cover about 70 percent of its municipal electricity needs. City officials plan to cover the remaining 30 percent through the purchase of renewable energy credits.

“That’s really a feature and not a bug of our plan,” said deputy chief sustainability officer Jared Policicchio. He added that he hopes the built-in market will help encourage additional clean energy development locally, albeit on a much smaller scale: “Our goal over the next several years is that we reach a point where we’re not buying renewable energy credits.”

Los Angeles, Houston, Seattle, Orlando, Florida, and more than 700 other U.S. cities and towns have signed similar purchasing agreements since 2015, according to a 2022 study from World Resources Institute, but none of their plans mandate nearly as much new renewable energy production as Chicago’s.

“Part of Chicago’s goal was what’s called additionality, bringing new resources into the market and onto the grid here,” said Popkin. “They were the largest municipal deal to do this.”

Chicago also secured a $400,000 annual commitment from Constellation and Swift Current for clean energy workforce training, including training via Chicago Women in Trades, a nonprofit aiming to increase the number of women in union construction and manufacturing jobs.

The economic benefits extend past the city’s limits: According to Swift Current, approximately $100 million in new tax revenue is projected to flow into Sangamon County and Morgan County, which are home to the Double Black Diamond Solar site, over the project’s operational life.

“Cities and other local governments just don’t appreciate their ability to not just support their residents but also shape markets,” said Popkin. “Chicago is demonstrating directly how cities can lead by example, implement ambitious goals amidst evolving state and federal policy changes, and leverage their purchasing power to support a more equitable renewable energy future.” ...

Chicago will meet its goal of transitioning all its municipal buildings to renewable energy by 2025, the first step in a broader goal to source energy for all buildings in the city from renewables by 2035 — making it the largest city in the country to do so, according to the Sierra Club.

With the incoming Trump administration promising to decrease federal support for decarbonizing the economy, Dane says it will be increasingly important for cities, towns and states to drive their own efforts to reduce emissions, build greener economies and meet local climate goals. He says moves like Chicago’s prove that they are capable.

“That is an imperative thing to know, that state, city, county action is a durable pathway, even under the next administration, and [it] needs to happen,” said Dane. “The juice is definitely still worth the squeeze.”

-via WBEZ, December 24, 2024

[politijohn]

Source

Source

[idigitizellp21]

Why The Renewable Energy Sector Growth Is Accelerating

Energy derived from natural sources that are produced faster than its utilization is referred to as renewable energy. With the scarcity of natural resources in ratio to the worldly population the need for more efficient and natural fuel is the need of the hour. Energy can be produced through various mediums like solar, wind, water, and geothermal energy which fall under the renewable resources bracket.

Did you know, the earth’s temperature has risen ban average of 0.14° Fahrenheit (0.08° Celsius) per decade since 1880? The rate of warming since 1981 is more than twice as fast: 0.32° F (0.18° C) per decade.

(information source: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature#:~:text=Earth's%20temperature%20has%20risen%20by,0.18%C2%B0%20C)%20per%20decade )

The above global warming crisis requires nations to channel energies towards lowering carbon emissions and hence the acceleration in renewable energy. From 2023 to 2032, it is anticipated that the potential of non-hydro (solar and wind) renewable energy sources would expand threefold. Nearly a third of the world’s total energy production by 2032 could originate from non-hydro renewable sources. The growth of solar and wind power generation has been exponential.

Non-hydro Renewables Share of Global Electricity Generation (%)

Main factors responsible for the Renewable Energy sector upsurge

Declining costs towards generating renewable energy have been a fundamental contributing factor to the expansion of the renewable energy sector. Factually, since 2010, the cost of power produced onshore and offshore, using wind as a source of energy generation has lowered by almost 50%, whereas the price for energy generated by solar cell systems has reduced by 85%. These two renewable energy sources could now compete with fossil fuel electricity in pricing.

Because of economies of scale, competitive supply chains, and other considerations, renewable energy sources grow more economical as they’re implemented more extensively. These declining costs are not only engaging more adoption towards their use but also aim to make it available in every look and corner of the globe. In the past decade, for instance, the expense of installing solar power has massively declined by 34%, enabling the quantity of solar capacity deployed worldwide to expand. Due to the unique features of being flexible and regulated, technological advancements once innovated can be adopted in one location and can be immediately imitated in other areas maintaining standardization in renewable energy generation.

According to the latest report from the IEA, the global energy crisis is prompting a sharp acceleration in the deployment of renewable energy, with total capacity expansion assessed to nearly double in the following five years, overtaking coal as the primary source of electricity generation.

Countries are resorting increasingly toward renewable energy sources such as solar and wind to substantially reduce their dependency on foreign fossil fuels, whose rates have quadrupled, as a consequence of multiple issues that surround energy security prompted by Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. The capacity of renewable energy is presently projected to rise by 2 400 gigawatts (GW) between 2022 and 2027, as per Renewables 2022, the IEA’s most recent annual analysis on the industry. During that period, this amount would indeed be equivalent to China’s entire energy capacity.

Multiple aspects of the implementation of renewable energy are likewise self-reinforcing. It gets simpler to enlist further policy assistance and monetary support as renewable energy emerges well, boosts its political power, and draws more funds. The cost of investment has declined as financiers work in tandem with the most prominent engineering consultancy not only to gain expert insights into the technicalities but also addresses project risks harmoniously.

Renewable energy sector synopsis:

As the energy revolution accelerates, we envisage seeing a rise in investments in renewable energy. There will undoubtedly be significant potential for renewables businesses as investments soar, notably for those functioning along the supply chain of solar and wind power. The production of solar power modules, cells, inverters, wafers, and tracking systems as well as the development and management of wind and solar power plant projects and assets all have the potential to benefit. We expect that these firms will eventually make the power sector more sustainable, providing beneficial investment possibilities in the process.

If you’re a part of the renewable energy sector and are facing unpleasant challenges with your project, you have landed on the right page.

Environmental Studies and Sustainability related Consultancy offered by MEC delivers a plethora of services essential for a smooth renewable power project. Assistance and guidance delivered from Environmental Impact Assessments, ESIA, Soil, Water, Air and Noise Investigations, Baseline & Modelling Studies Green House Gas and Energy Efficiency Reporting, Environmental, Waste & Chemical Management Plan, to Sustainability SISCAN & Lifecycle Analysis, Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting enables you to leverage the sector opportunities. Furthermore, in implementing innovative solutions in the renewable energy industry, our proficient team of engineers provide end-to-end support making your business model sustainable.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An end to the climate emergency is in our grasp

On June 20, I'm keynoting the LOCUS AWARDS in OAKLAND.

The problem with good news in the real world is that it's messy. Neat happy endings are for novels, not the real world, and that goes double for the climate emergency. But even though good climate news is complicated and nuanced, that doesn't mean it shouldn't buoy our spirits and fill our hearts with hope.

The big climate news this past week is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's clarion call about surging CO2 levels – the highest ever – amid a year that is on track to have the largest and most extreme series of weather events in human history:

https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/during-year-of-extremes-carbon-dioxide-levels-surge-faster-than-ever

This is genuinely alarming and you – like me – have probably experienced it as a kind of increase in your background radiation of climate anxiety. Perhaps you – like me – even experienced some acute, sit-bolt-upright-in-bed-at-2AM anxiety as a result. That's totally justifiable. This is very real, very bad news.

And yet…

The news isn't all bad, and even this terrible dispatch from the NOAA is best understood in context, which Bill McKibben provides in his latest newsletter post, "What You Want is an S Curve":

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/what-you-want-is-an-s-curve

Financier and their critics should all be familiar with Stein's Law: "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." This is true outside of finance as well. One of the reasons that we're seeing such autophagic panic from the tech companies is that their period of explosive growth is at an end.

For years, they told themselves that they were experiencing double-digit annual growth because they were "creating value" and "innovating" but the majority of their growth was just a side-effect of the growth of the internet itself. When hundreds of millions of people get online every year, the dominant online services will, on average, gain hundreds of millions of new users.

But when you run out of people who don't have internet access, your growth is going to slow. How can it not? Indeed, at that point, the only ways to grow are to either poach users from your rivals (through the very expensive tactics of massive advertising and sales-support investments, on top of discounts and freebies as switching enticements), or to squeeze your own users for more.

That's why the number of laptops sold in America slowed down. It's why the number of cellphones sold in America slowed down. It's why the number of "smart home" gizmos slowed down.

Even the steepest hockey-stick-shaped exponential growth curve eventually levels off and becomes an S-curve, because anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop.

One way or another, the world's carbon emissions will eventually level off. Even if we drive ourselves to (or over) the brink of extinction and set up the conditions for wildfires that release all the carbon stored in all the Earth's plants, the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere has to level off.

Rendering the Earth incapable of sustaining human civilization (or life) is the ultimate carbon reduction method – but it's not my first choice.

That's where McKibben's latest newsletter comes in. He cites a new report from the Rocky Mountain Institute, which shows a major reversal in our energy sources, a shift that will see our energy primarily provided by renewables, with minimal dependence on fossil fuels:

https://rmi.org/insight/the-cleantech-revolution/

The RMI team says that in this year or next, we'll have hit peak demand for fossil fuels (a fact that is consistent with NOAA's finding that we're emitting more CO2 than ever). The reason for this is that so much renewable energy is about to come online, and it is so goddamned cheap, that we are about to undergo a huge shift in our energy consumption patterns.

This past decade saw a 12-fold increase in solar capacity, a 180-fold increase in battery storage, and a 100-fold increase in EV sales. China is leading the world in a cleantech transition, with the EU in close second. Cleantech is surging in places where energy demand is also still growing, like India and Vietnam. Fossil fuel use has already peaked in Thailand, South Africa and every country in Latin America.

We're on the verge of solar constituting an absolute majority of all the world's energy generation. This year, batteries will overtake pumped hydro for energy storage. Every cleantech metric is growing the way that fossil fuels did in previous centuries: investment, patents, energy density, wind turbine rotor size. The price of solar is on track to halve (again) in the next decade.

In short, cleantech growth looks like the growth of other technologies that were once rarities and then became ubiquitous overnight: TV, cellphones, etc. That growth isn't merely being driven by the urgency of the climate emergency: it's primarily a factor of how fucking great cleantech is:

https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/the_incredible_inefficiency_of_fossils.pdf

Fossil fuels suck. It's not just that they wreck the planet, or that their extraction is both politically and environmentally disastrous. They just aren't a good way to make energy. About a third of fossil fuel energy is wasted in production and transportation. A third! Another third is wasted turning fossil fuels into energy. Two thirds! The net energy efficiency of fossil fuels is about 37%.

Compare that with cleantech. EVs convert electricity to movement with 80-90% efficiency. Heat pumps are 300% efficient (the main fuel for your heat pump is the heat in the atmosphere, not the electricity it draws).

Cleantech is just getting started – it's still in the hockey-stick phase. That means those efficiency numbers are only going up. Rivian just figured out how to remove 1.6 miles of copper wire from each vehicle. That's just one rev – there's doubtless lots of room for more redesigns that will further dematerialize EVs:

https://insideevs.com/news/722265/rivian-r1s-r1t-wiring/

As McKibben points out, there's been a lot of justifiable concern that electrification will eventually use up all our available copper, but copper demand has remained flat even as electrification has soared – and this is why. We keep figuring out new ways to electrify with fewer materials:

https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/copper-wire-price-remains-stable-amidst-surplus-supply-and-expanding-mining-25416#:~:text=Global%20Copper%20wire%20Price%20Remains%20Stable%20Amidst%20Surplus%20Supply%20and%20Expanding%20Mining%20Activities

This is exactly what happened with previous iterations of tech. The material, energy and labor budgets of cars, buildings, furniture, etc all fell precipitously every time there was a new technique for manufacturing them. Renewables are at the start of that process. There's going to be a lot of this dematerialization in cleantech. Calculating the bill of materials for a planetary energy transition isn't a matter of multiplying the materials in current tech by the amount of new systems we'll need – as we create those new systems, we will constantly whittle down their materials.

What's more, global instability drives cleantech uptake. The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a surge in European renewables. The story that energy prices are rising due to renewables (or carbon taxes) is a total lie. Fossil fuels are getting much more expensive, thanks to both war and rampant, illegal price-fixing:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused

If not for renewables, the incredible energy shocks of the recent years would be far more severe.

The renewables story is very good and it should bring you some comfort. But as McKibben points out, it's still not enough – yet. The examples of rapid tech uptake had big business on their side. America's living rooms filled with TV because America's largest businesses pulled out all the stops to convince everyone to buy a TV. By contrast, today's largest businesses – banks, oil companies and car companies – are working around the clock to stop cleantech adoption.

We're on track to double our use of renewables before the decade is over. But to hold to the (already recklessly high) targets from the Paris Accord, we need to triple our renewables usage. As McKibben says, the difference between doubling and tripling our renewables by 2030 is the difference between "survivable trouble" and something much scarier.

The US is experiencing a welcome surge in utility scale solar, but residential solar is stalling out as governments withdraw subsidies or even begin policies that actively restrict rooftop solar:

https://twitter.com/curious_founder/status/1798049929082097842?s=51

McKibben says the difference between where we are now and bringing back the push for home solar generation is the difference between "fast" and "faster" – that is the difference between tripling renewables by 2030 (survivable) and doubling (eek).

Capitalism stans who argue that we can survive the climate emergency with market tools will point to the good news on renewable and say that the market is the only way to transition to renewables. It's true that market forces are partly responsible for this fast transition. But the market is also the barrier to a faster (and thus survivable) transition. The oil companies, the banks who are so invested in fossil fuels, the petrostates who distort the world's politics – they're why we're not much farther along.

The climate emergency was never going to be neatly solved. We weren't going to get a neat novelistic climax that saw our problems sorted out in a single fell swoop. We're going to be fighting all the way to net zero, and after that, we'll still have decades of climate debt to pay down: fires, floods, habitat loss, zoonotic plagues, refugee crises.

But we should take our wins. Even if we're far from where we need to be on renewables, we're much farther along on renewables than we had any business hoping for, just a few years ago. The momentum is on our side. It's up to us to use that momentum and grow it. We're riding the hockey-stick, they're on that long, flat, static top of the S-curve. Their curve is leveling off and will start falling, ours will grow like crazy for the rest of our lives.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/12/s-curve/#anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-eventually-stops

[probablyasocialecologist]

Sheep living among rows of solar panels spend more time grazing, benefit from more nutritious food, rest more and appear to experience less heat stress, compared with nearby sheep in empty fields.

Earlier research suggested that agrivoltaic farms – which combine grazing animals with solar panels – offer more efficient renewable energy at lower overhead costs, as well as reducing wildfire risks. The latest findings show that the practice is also good for animal welfare, providing further evidence for a win-win situation, says Emma Kampherbeek, who carried out the work while at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

[...]

As for pasture quality, the nitrogen content was higher and carbon content lower in the solar panel fields, suggesting that the vegetation in this pasture – which was greener – was more nutritious and more easily digestible. That might be due to the reduced exposure to intense solar rays and to dew dripping off the panels, providing much-needed moisture, she says.

The results are likely to be even more pronounced in warmer seasons, she adds. Additional research is under way to analyse the data taken from temperature recordings during her study.

Sheep make good candidates for agrivoltaics because they are efficient foragers, keeping weeds off solar panels, and are small enough to pass under the panels, says Kampherbeek. And, unlike goats, they don’t chew the electrical wires.

The findings strongly suggest that solar power centres should be designed with a partner animal species in mind, she says.

[alltimefail]

Totally random but this shot always makes me crazy:

This one, too:

I've rewatched this damn show like 50 times or more at this point and still I find myself always watching Charles even if he isn't the "focus" of the scene because not only is he always lurking and observing but he's also REACTING. Like, full face reactions at all times.

Oh to be a fly on the the wall of Charles Rowland's mind...

[dosesofcommonsense]

EV car owners don’t realize the car, tires, electronics, and trim on the car was made from oil. That EV car is one giant virtue signaling soapbox that doesn’t actually clean the environment.

[alpaca-clouds]

Solarpunk Autumns. Solarpunk Winters.

Solarpunk as a genre exists in a state of a permanent summer. Both as a genre, and an aesthetic. Solarpunk pictures usually show us worlds that have everything in so many shades of green. Green bushes. Green trees. Green everything. Fields in Solarpunk are always filled with ripe corn and wheat. And trees in Solarpunk are full of ripe fruit.

But if we look into Solarpunk worldbuilding there is also the fact that of course at some point at many places of the world it will become autumn, and winter.

I mean, I am feeling it right now, sitting here in my bed with three blankets and shivering, as the summer has very suddenly ended.

Sure, Solarpunk originated from Brazil. And while I do not know a whole lot about Brazillian climate, I do understand that it is close enough to the equator to be fairly warm yearround.

But I honestly would love to see more stories and artworks set in Solarpunk worlds during the autumn and winter. Especially because it is a very interesting topic when it comes to both the renewable energies and the food systems of Solarpunk worlds.

Now, admittedly, the renewable energy is less interesting to me, but we still should talk about it. In winter and autumn a lot of the renewable energy sources are a bit less viable. The sun has less energy and the further north (or south) you go, the less sun you get during the winter. Wind turbines also often struggle because there is in fact too much wind - and some older turbines do not do too well during harsh winter conditions. Water usually has less of a problem, unless the water energy is created in shallow conditions where the water freezes. But of course, there is nuclear energy to take care of most issues, even if everything else fails - even though some people still do not want to hear about it.

The food aspect is a lot more interesting though, especially from a modern point of view.

Because we people today are very used to eating the same stuff year around. Like potatoes, carrots, bellpeppers, tomatoes, cabbage, oranges, apples, pears, and bananas are usually available in the supermarket no matter when you go there. But of course we also know that those only are there because of the rather destructive ways we use to cultivate food and bring it to us. These things usually are grown somewhere closer to the equator and then are brought to Europe/North America via plane, emitting a lot more CO2.

Of course, this is a fairly new development. For the most of human history, nobody - or only the very richest people - had access to imported food like that. So instead they would only eat was either was available in their own country and their own fields right now, or that they could conserve in some way or form.

And frankly... I think that is something I would like to see some more off in Solarpunk media. In people not needing everything to be available all the time. And people also working to conserve food in one way or another to make it last longer.

Also I do want to bring it up again: There were a lot of well known "winter vegetables" in Europe during most of our history there. Stuff that would get ripe in late autumn and would keep rather well. And a lot of those vegetables have been forgotten.

So... Yeah, I really would see that issue discussed a bit more.

And sure, we might be able to worldbuild around the issue in some degree with greenhouses and stuff. But I think it would be nice to just question our relation with the always available foods.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Alberta government is proposing additional restrictions on wind and solar farms that conservationists think are more about limiting renewable energy than protecting the environment. Last year the Alberta government imposed a seven-month moratorium on new renewable energy projects, after which Premier Danielle Smith announced her government would be taking an “agriculture first” approach to regulating renewable energy project locations. That approach includes preventing renewable energy projects from being within 35 kilometres of “pristine viewscapes” and parks and protected areas, and a near total ban where soil conditions are prime for yielding crops. “We need to ensure that we’re not sacrificing our future agricultural yields, or tourism dollars, or breathtaking viewscapes to rush renewables developments,” Smith said at the time.

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @abpoli

[hope-for-the-planet]

From the article:

Seven countries now generate nearly all of their electricity from renewable energy sources according to newly compiled figures. Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, solar or wind power. Data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) also revealed that a further 40 countries generated at least 50 per cent of the electricity they consumed from renewable energy technologies in 2021 and 2022 – including 11 European countries.

[reasonsforhope]

The European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 8.3% in 2023 as a surge in renewable energy installations helped displace coal.

This means the bloc’s emissions have declined 37% since 1990, while its economy has grown 68% over the same period.

The divergence indicates “the continued decoupling of emissions and economic growth,” the European Commission said in an update, adding that the region is on track to reach its target of reducing emissions by at least 55% by 2030.

According to an analysis by the European Environment Agency, based only on existing climate measures and planned actions, the EU will reduce its emissions by 49% by 2030.

Electricity and heating lead the way

Emissions from electricity production and heating under the region’s emissions trading system (ETS) dropped 24% in 2023, compared to the previous year, per the Commission.

Set up in 2005, the ETS is widely viewed as a key driver of the bloc’s decarbonisation. In 2023, it generated revenues of €43.6 billion in 2023 for climate action investments.

However, some sectors are still moving in the wrong direction. For instance, aviation emissions grew 9.5% last year as the sector continued to rebound in the wake of the pandemic.

More to be done

“The EU is leading the way in the clean transition, with another year of strong greenhouse gas emission reductions in 2023,” said Wopke Hoekstra, commissioner for climate action.

“As we head off soon to COP29, we once again demonstrate to our international partners that it is possible to take climate action and invest in growing our economy at the same time,” Hoekstra added. “Sadly, the report also shows that our work must continue, at home and abroad, as we are seeing the harm that climate change is causing our citizens.”

In a separate statement, Leena Ylä-Mononen, executive director of the European Environment Agency, said climate change impacts were “accelerating”, meaning the bloc needed to become more resilient to extreme weather while also slashing emissions.

In the second quarter of 2024, renewables accounted for 52% of all electricity generated in the EU, a 6 percentage point increase in a year. Nuclear generation was up slightly and comprised 24% of the mix, meaning clean sources made up 76% of the region’s total electrical output.

-via The Progress Playbook, November 1, 2024