Earlier this week, the G7 countries proudly announced a target to be free of fossil fuels by the end of the century. What a joke, setting a target for something when the date is long after they are all no longer on the planet.
But if such a thing is possible and even desirable, why are the same countries actually increasing their usage of coal?
The brave new religion of global warming where lip service is far more important that actual deeds. The exact opposite of true faith.
From Jo Nova:
Forget momentum for renewables. Five of the G7 nations increased their coal use
Spot the contradictions. Oxfam want us to believe we can be “coal free” in France, the UK and Italy by 2023. Then they tell us that most of these richest of rich nations are already trying and failing to do that. They are using more coal.
Then there is a nifty graph below, which seems to suggest that in these same nations solar is cheaper than coal. If solar is so cheap then, we don’t need any schemes, markets or subsidies. Right?
Welcome to reality — even the richest greenest nations need more coal:
Five of the world’s seven richest countries have increased their coal use in the last five years despite demanding that poor countries slash their carbon emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change, new research shows.
Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and France together burned 16% more coal in 2013 than 2009 and are planning to further increase construction of coal-fired power stations. Only the US and Canada of the G7 countries meeting on Monday in Berlin have reduced coal consumption since the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.
The US has reduced its coal consumption by 8% largely because of fracking for shale gas. Overall, the G7 countries reduced coal consumption by less than 1% between 2009-2013, the Oxfam research shows.
A tad ambitious?
The UK could feasibly stop burning coal for its energy supply by 2023, according to Oxfam’s report.
…. and in the US and Canada by 2030
There is a reason Africa is poor and Africans want to come to the West.
The briefing paper comes as nearly 200 countries meet in Bonn ahead of crunch climate talks in Paris later this year, and shows that G7 coal plants emit twice as much CO2 as the entire African continent annually, and 10 times as much as the 48 least developed countries put together.
Read the full article here. If you have trouble understanding the map, consider this. Some parts of Australia that are too remote to be connected to the mainly coal-fired national electricity grid have discovered that solar power is cheaper than using diesel generators to power the town. Therefore the whole of Australia is coloured as solar is cheaper than “conventional.”
