The Wrong Way – We Increased Our Use of Fossil Fuels

We Are Heading in the Wrong Direction. New Report Shows That We Actually Increased Our Use of Fossil Fuels

We all know it. But do we act? We know we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels to produce electricity, plastics, to run vehicles and more. But in 2018, we actually INCREASED our use of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas and oil).

By doing so, we continue to make planetary catastrophe more likely.

According to a worrying new report from the International Energy Agency, the US and China (the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters) chose to switch from coal (it’s now more expensive than renewables) to natural gas.

(People keep saying natural gas is great – but it isn’t. It releases CO2 (less than coal, but still a lot), plus it releases methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas.

The report showed what is happening around the world (see below).

Here’s How We Increased our Use of Fossil Fuels

• Demand for coal (the worst fossil fuel) rose again in China and India.
• Coal dropped in the US, but use of natural gas surged to its highest-ever level.
• Renewables (wind, solar, nuclear) made up just one third of the energy consumed in 2018. So fossil fuels remain firmly in control with two thirds.
• Europe was the only region in the world that managed to stabilise its total energy demand through expanded use of renewable energy.
• China added more than six times the amount of renewable energy to its grid than the United States did — but even that is nowhere near enough to offset continued investment in fossil fuels.
• Normally, better energy efficiency helps to offset energy growth. But in 2018, it didn’t.
• The gap is now huge between what scientists tell us we need to do, and what we’re doing.
• We’re heading towards the worse-case scenario.

But We Don’t Need To !

And yet, we don’t need to. A new research report found that solar and wind have become so cheap in the United States, that it’s more cost-effective to immediately tear down and replace 74 percent of the country’s coal-fired power plants than to continue fuelling them.

So why don’t we?

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Warm regards,

P.S.  Don’t forget to download your free climate change report here!