Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of units
- List of conversion factors
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Climate
- Part II Energy
- 6 Taking up arms against this sea of troubles
- 7 How fast to move: a physicist's look at the economists
- 8 Energy, emissions, and action
- 9 Fossil fuels – how much is there?
- 10 Electricity, emissions, and pricing carbon
- 11 Efficiency: the first priority
- 12 Nuclear energy
- 13 Renewables
- 14 Biofuels: is there anything there?
- 15 An energy summary
- Part III Policy
- References
- Index
10 - Electricity, emissions, and pricing carbon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of units
- List of conversion factors
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Climate
- Part II Energy
- 6 Taking up arms against this sea of troubles
- 7 How fast to move: a physicist's look at the economists
- 8 Energy, emissions, and action
- 9 Fossil fuels – how much is there?
- 10 Electricity, emissions, and pricing carbon
- 11 Efficiency: the first priority
- 12 Nuclear energy
- 13 Renewables
- 14 Biofuels: is there anything there?
- 15 An energy summary
- Part III Policy
- References
- Index
Summary
THE ELECTRICITY SECTOR
Worldwide, the two largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions are electricity generation and transportation. Electricity generation is the topic of this chapter while transportation is part of the next.
Coal makes up by far the largest fraction of fuel used to produce electricity. The United States and China are the Saudi Arabias of coal, and coal with all its emissions problems is the fastest expanding fuel for electricity production. It is the lowest in cost because of its abundance and ease of extraction, and because power plants can be built relatively quickly. Without some sort of emissions charge or other limitation mechanism, coal will remain the lowest-cost fuel for a long time to come. Finding a substitute for coal or a way to reduce emissions from coal is critical to the world effort to reduce greenhouse gas production.
In the United States, coal and natural gas are used to generate 70% of electricity, and, according to the EIA, are responsible for producing nearly 40% of US greenhouse gas emissions. The percentages are not very different from those of other industrialized countries with the exception of France. France gets most of its electricity from greenhouse-gas-free nuclear power and has much lower emissions per unit GDP and very much lower emissions from the electricity sector. I will come back to this in the chapter on nuclear power.
There are only four ways to go about reducing the emissions from electricity generation:
Emit less greenhouse gas by making electricity generation more efficient (less fuel for the same electrical output);
[…]
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- Beyond Smoke and MirrorsClimate Change and Energy in the 21st Century, pp. 83 - 93Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010