Going Green

Mitigating the effect of climate change

April 07, 2022 Philip Russell / Paul Russell Season 2 Episode 14
Going Green
Mitigating the effect of climate change
Show Notes

The IPCC Report came out a few days ago about mitigating the effects of climate change. The IPCC third report looks at over the 2010 - 2020 period and makes projections of what needs to be done to prevent global warming and to limit the climate to 1.5 degrees of warming. In the last decade the world has managed to curb some critical items. CO2 emissions rose 54% from the millennium. Last 10 years only a 24% increase. So have managed to reduce the real amount of emissions by a third Between 2000 -2010 worldwide it was proposed that the number of coal plants to be built was 855. In the decade 2010-2020 of the 855 coal power stations to be built, only 189 were actually built and the rest cancelled. The reason for this is that Coal is now much more expensive to burn because of increased Mining and shipping costs. The price of renewables too has dropped. It is now cheaper to build a wind farm than a power station with the same power output. But in addition to this a coal power station will have the cost of the coal to power it to be supplied and the cost of running a wind turbine is just maintenance. The wind farm only produces power on windy days whereas the coal power station can produce power all the time. But installing more wind farms in different locations means that wind is more or less guaranteed. This sign could hopefully mean the demise of the coal power station within a few years.