The critical role of power sources in the climate crisis
And there will be a personal announcement at the end
*Personal announcement at the end
Many sustainable businesses are now monitoring direct emissions from their facilities. Yet, this only captures a small portion of the overall emissions. The huge lump comes from the sources of power, which contain a substantial amount of fossil fuels.
The primary drivers of global warming and climate change are CO2 emissions coming from human activities. These include burning fossil fuels, using fluorinated gases in various household and industrial applications, and deforestation.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) urges us to intensively reduce our carbon emissions to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. While countries and companies are prioritizing their decarbonization strategies, they also fail to dissect their operation with proper planning that visualizes an intensive process.
This means failing to understand the processes that are the most carbon-intensive. Figure 1 shows that energy and agriculture are the two most polluting categories globally, representing 75.6% and 11.6% of the global emissions, respectively. Despite this knowledge, the use of fossil fuels is still intensive in many countries.
With agriculture, one of the main ways to tackle greenhouse gas emissions is to eat less meat because livestock production processes are the biggest contributor to food emissions, accounting for more than 25% and causing widespread deforestation.
In addition, promoting regenerative farming offers a sustainable way to produce food while sequestering more carbon in the soil.
Now, coming to the bigger problem with 75.6% of the energy-related emissions— the world is currently struggling to sort out.
Related: Solar energy facts: a win-win for businesses and the planet
Sources of power: Fuels with higher emissions impact
All economic processes involve the sources of power and energy to do the actual work. Currently, fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas are the primary energy sources globally.
Figure 2 shows the carbon emissions of various fuels. Lignite (brown coal)— a part of fossil fuels has the highest emissions with approximately 399 gCO2/kWh.
Continuous use of these fuels is the reason behind increasing emissions and catastrophic global climate change. Therefore, many countries are effortlessly working hard, but their actions have not been enough to step away from fossil fuels.
Demetrios Papathanasiou, Global Director of Energy and Extractives at the World Bank, believes that the shift to cleaner energy is hampered by the high cost. Less wealthy nations find themselves in a challenging situation because they are already facing higher electricity costs and struggle to come up with the initial expenses of clean energy. As a result, they remain dependent on fossil fuel projects.
In 2023, coal consumption increased by 1.4% globally, reaching approximately 8,536Â million tonnes. This is because countries are still struggling with energy recovery and are switching to coal for power generation due to high natural gas prices.
Related: Energy security concerns lead to more coal production
Figure 3 shows the leading carbon-emitting countries for 2023. China was the largest emitter at 31.8%, followed by the U.S. at 14.4% and India at 9.5%.
Energy intensive countries
More than 40% of the global emissions took place in Asia, with China and India taking top positions. The U.S. and the EU were responsible for approximately 14.4% and 4.9%, respectively.
Figure 4 looks at the electricity sources and emissions of China, the U.S., and India closely. Out of these three countries, India relied on fossil fuels heavily with 78%, which is directly seen in the emissions coming from electricity generation.
Overall, greenhouse gas emissions are still highest in China in the year. The country’s increasing contribution to global coal-fired electricity generation has significantly influenced the emissions. In 2023, China accounted for approximately 57% of the total worldwide coal generation, up from about 55% in the previous three years.
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Renewables can save emissions
As energy is used almost everywhere in the ecosystem, its sources become the highest contributor to global emissions.
For example, in the building, we have emissions coming from the direct use of fossil fuels, such as oil and gas used in boilers for heating and partly from electricity production.
In the transportation sector, use of gasoline and jet fuel consumption makes up more than 30% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Although more than one million electric vehicles were sold in 2023 in the U.S., they still make up a relatively small percentage on the road.
But the solution has been there for a while— switch to cleaner forms of energy, particularly renewables. Germany’s example of how much emissions were saved by switching to renewables is shown in Figure 5.
According to Fraunhofer ISE, renewables accounted for a record share of 59.7% of the net public electricity generation in Germany in 2023. The emissions saved in electricity, heating, and transportation were 195 Mt CO2eq, 44 Mt CO2eq, and 11 Mt CO2eq, respectively.
Related: Germany reaches a record high in the installation of renewable energy
This proves that shifting our energy sources from fossil fuels to renewable power is necessary to stabilize our climate.
When scaling down to companies from the countries, awareness of the climate crisis is there, and the companies are facing increasing pressure to take action from governments, customers, investors, and employees. However, they are bundled in the web of improper strategies.
Many companies are essentially offsetting a portion of emissions by supporting projects such as reforestation and renewable energy plants. These controversial carbon credits may be an immediate solution but not permanent.
Related: Is investing in carbon credits a viable solution to meet climate targets?
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Congrats! I didn’t think agricultural was such a large percentage of total CO2 emissions. I do believe there is some debate about those numbers.
Regardless, the production of meat is certainly a large contributor, which is why efforts to ban lab-grown meat in the US are very worrisome. This is a new technology, and it ought to be explored.