Woodstock — Vermont State Reps. Klein and Cheney want a renewables purchase standard, RPS, and have invited you to help out. You rightly state Vermont cannot do it alone. Even Germany cannot do it alone either. Even if the U.S. were to disappear, its “CO2 hole” would be filled in about seven years by others. Siemens estimated the cost of Germany’s efforts at 1.7 trillion euros, or $2.26 trillion, by 2030.
If the U.S. were to follow Germany’s course, the cost would be about ($14.5 trillion, US GDP)/($3.5 trillion, German GDP) x $2.26 trillion = $9.36 trillion. It is 100 percent sure, the U.S. will not follow on that course anytime soon, if ever, and almost all other nations, especially developing nations, do not have the resources, and/or the willingness, to follow Germany.
The Energy Information Administration, EIA, is projecting the world’s energy consumption to increase by 53 percent, from 505 quadrillion Btu in 2008 to 770 quadrillion Btu in 2035. See the figure 12 spreadsheet of the report. Worldwide, the renewables fraction of total consumption will increase from 10.6 percent in 2010 to 15.2 percent in 2035, the fossil fraction will decrease from 84.1 percent to 79.1 percent.Note: 1,055 Btu = 1 Joule; a quadrillion = 10 to the power 15.
This means significantly greater quantities of CO2 will be emitted in 2035 than in 2010 and that any efforts made by Germany to reduce its CO2 emissions will be extremely insignificant regarding global warming. Even if all of Europe were to reduce its CO2 emissions to zero, the increase by other nations would be about twice as great as Europe’s decrease.
World CO2 emissions (in 1,000 million metric tonnes) were 29.89, 31.63 and 33.51 in 2008, 2009 and 2010, respectively, projected by the EIA at 33.51 x 1.5 = 50.27 in 2035.
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