The Math For 2030

The World is Not Going To Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions by 50% By 2030, Now What?

Roger Pielke, October 27, 2019 (Forbes)

“…[The math shows the world is far from being on a path that will come anywhere close to limiting global warming to 1.5°C by making global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2)] fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050…[Assuming 2.2% consumption growth per year to 2030, the world will consume about 4,200 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe)] more in 2030 than in 2018 [though mtoe is a deceptive unit to use for this math]…That means that the world will need add about 1,000 mtoe of carbon-free energy every year over the next decade [but if 1,000 mtoe equals 11.63 GWh, that should be achievable with the 200 GW of New Energy capacity expected to be added in the next decade]…

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Over the past decade, the world added about 64 mtoe of carbon-free energy every year, and in 2018 it added a record 114 mtoe. So the world would need to accelerate the deployment of carbon-free energy by 9 times or more the rate observed in 2018 [but additions of New Energy are accelerating exponentially]…Last year’s record increase of 114 mtoe of carbon-free energy was dwarfed by an increase in fossil fuels of more than 275 mtoe [but the growth of fossil fuels is fading as fast as the rise of New Energy]. It is [not necessarily] accurate to say that the world’s growing supply of carbon-free energy is additive, and not replacing fossil fuels [but that is shifting] …The bottom line of this analysis should be undeniable…” click here for more

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