Sunday, August 19, 2012
What's Keeping the Lights On?
Jo Nova has published a pie chart at her blog on climate which puts energy production worldwide in tera watt hours (billion kilowatt hours) by category. Here it is:
And here are the percentages:
Fossil fuel including uranium (that is, non-renewable fuel) 80.4%
Hydroelectric 16.5%
96.9%
Let's stop there. So fossil fuels, nuclear and dams provide, for all practical purposes, all of the energy the world uses for everyday living and commerce. The non-hydroelectric renewables are in total a pitiful 3.2% (rounded up). I'm not sure that even qualifies as boutique power production. And it's particularly pitiful in that the much touted but worthless intermittent power sources (wind and sun) are nearly always 100% backed up by fossil fuels even when the intermittent power sources are producing power.
Does any sober, thinking person think that we can shut down even a small part of the 80 plus percent without hurting further an already hurting world economy?
Does any sober, thinking person think that the 3.2% can be easily scaled up to take over even a tiny slice more of the nearly 97% of the energy used in the world?
Stop wasting money on non economic power sources (wind and solar) for the mythical problem increased atmospheric CO2 poses. It's not even pie in the sky thinking. It's an order of magnitude less realistic than pie in the sky.
And here are the percentages:
Fossil fuel including uranium (that is, non-renewable fuel) 80.4%
Hydroelectric 16.5%
96.9%
Let's stop there. So fossil fuels, nuclear and dams provide, for all practical purposes, all of the energy the world uses for everyday living and commerce. The non-hydroelectric renewables are in total a pitiful 3.2% (rounded up). I'm not sure that even qualifies as boutique power production. And it's particularly pitiful in that the much touted but worthless intermittent power sources (wind and sun) are nearly always 100% backed up by fossil fuels even when the intermittent power sources are producing power.
Does any sober, thinking person think that we can shut down even a small part of the 80 plus percent without hurting further an already hurting world economy?
Does any sober, thinking person think that the 3.2% can be easily scaled up to take over even a tiny slice more of the nearly 97% of the energy used in the world?
Stop wasting money on non economic power sources (wind and solar) for the mythical problem increased atmospheric CO2 poses. It's not even pie in the sky thinking. It's an order of magnitude less realistic than pie in the sky.
Labels: Global Energy Production Pie Chart
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 10:26 PM 
