|
|
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| {{Summer School on Global Sustainability}} | | {{Summer School on Global Sustainability}} |
|
| |
| Burning oil produces 43%, and producing electricity produces 41%, of U.S. fossil-fuel carbon emissions, and 92% of the power-plant emissions come from burning coal. Three-fourths of U.S. electricity can be saved even with late-1980s technologies at an average cost below that of operating a central thermal power plant, even if its construction and delivery cost nothing. Indeed, the potential is probably larger and cheaper by now, thanks largely to integrative design that can make very large efficiency gains cost less than small ones or none. Over several decades, the central thermal power plants that now dominate U.S. and global power generation can and will be displaced by diverse, dispersed, distributed, largely or wholly renewable sources that are already soundly beating central plants in the global marketplace. This shift will not raise significant storage or backup issues, but will accelerate profitable climate protection, whereas new nuclear build would retard and reduce it due to nuclear plants' excessive cost and slowness. The transition from oil and coal to efficiency and renewables provides a practical and profitable recipe for largely or wholly solving many of the world's problems, such as climate change, oil dependence, nuclear proliferation, and global poverty.
| |
