photo: urbanraven
Global energy use is projected to soar 57 percent between 2004 and 2030, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report released today. China, India and the United States alone will account for half of the growth in worldwide oil consumption. The report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts consumption of planet-warming coal will grow 2.2 percent a year with China, India and the U.S. responsible for 86 percent of the spike in demand. Needless, to say that means greenhouse gas emissions would jump nearly 60 percent by 2030. But here’s the rub: the projections are based on current energy policies and assume no new limits on greenhouse gas emissions will be imposed by 2030. Of course, such figures only increase the likelihood Congress will pass global warming legislation this year. Meanwhile, on Monday Republican governors Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Jodi Rell of Connecticut slammed the Bush administration for "inaction and denial" on global warming. The governator kept the pressure on the administration by also signing an agreement today with Utah that calls for the state to join Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington in imposing a regional cap on greenhouse gas emissions as well as developing a carbon trading market.
Report: Energy Use to Grow 57 percent by 2030
May 21, 2007 by Todd Woody
Green Wombat 
One would think that people should be willing to recognize that the world is headed for an eventual head-on collision with ever-rising energy costs and shrinking availability. Our earth is not blessed with an endless supply of oil and gas. However, based on people’s tendency to deny negatives, it will probably not be until someone says to people “sorry sir or maam, but we are out of gas to put into your gas tank” before people face the reality that we were blind to our blessed opportunities to conserve energy and secure alternative sources. Just like Napoleon, we don’t learn until the walls of limitations are in our face.
Peak Oil, gas, and probably coal will be here by then…
Its like people are fighting about where they are sitting in a van that is headed towards a brick wall.
All oil/gas will be used regardless of new energy sources. Even if the US switches from oil to electric/hydrogen(will be very costly for years), how can poor countries afford this technology. They will still use internal combustion(gas) tech since it’s so common and the machines are cheap. There’s no stopping carbon emmisions until they are gone.
Read the book titled “The upside of down”. I read it and did not see any upside in view at present.
Woody Woodhead won’t post any views that disagree with his “Chicken Little” viewpoint of the world. Believe me I’ve tried and tried. Let’s see how long he leaves this comment up.
Wow, 57% increase by 2030? I can’t wait.
Then we all know what it will feel like when we all fry in hell for allowing Femocrats and Republicans to betray our country.
Got a light?
Look at EIA oil production chart.
http://www.iammea.org/awissner/peakoil/8mbpdgap.JPG
Not good.
What is going on right now is very scary. It is possibly the most significant event in our lifetime. Our entire society is based upon the availability of cheap energy, regardless of source. Unfortunately, the major sources are fossil fuels. With each unit of fossil fuel we use, we release several chemicals, one of which is carbon dioxide. This release is almost certainly adding to global warming. With what is in the air already, we are commited to at least one degree of warming. If we hit two degrees of warming, we will probably cause a series of events that cannot be stopped until we reach about six degrees of warming. By that time, our society will be gone along with most of the people on the planet. As common people, we don’t know how to stop using fossil fuel, the government is still arguing about how much it should be involved, and we continue to burn fuel. This is more than just hot air. When we can no longer drive to work or to anything beyond two or three miles, that’s when it will be obvious, but by then it will be too late. By then we will already be commited to two degrees and the unstoppable six degrees or more. Our only hope lies in the fact that fossil fuels are running out. They won’t disappear. They will just become too expensive to bring to market. If they are too expensive, we will be forced to stop burning them. Unfortunately, I fear that the end of cheap fossil fuels will come too late to stop the cascading weather changes.
So how much of that 60% increase of greenhouse emissions growth is “Water Vapor”? That is the biggest greenhouse gas, is it not?
Water vapor is not a greenhouse gas issue. CO2 is the main issue. FYI, there are 2 water vapor volumes emitted for every CO2 volume emission, when natural gas is burned. This ratio becomes lower (i.e. worse) when oil or coal is burned. For all of the non-technical people, there are also big problems with burning just hydrogen, despite popular/stupid press (more NOx is emitted, the energy needed to make the hydrogen, transportation and distribution of hydrogen is dangerous and expensive). The only solution is less consumption of energy. It does not mean nuclear (which is a viable alternative, but it is also extremely dangerous). Get used to more cold and more heat, regardless of the temperature of the planet. It is not as bad as you may think. And, by the way, stop using so much water…….J
Jerry is absolutely correct. The only solution is less consumption of energy. The big question is how do you do that? You can try substituting one energy source after another you run out of ideas, but you will always end up substituting one major unsolvable problem for another major unsolvable problem. Ultimately we must find a way to use less energy. We have grown used to the lives we lead, and our lives as we know them are based on cheap energy. It may not be that we use too much energy per person, but rather that we have too many people. So, our problem can be stated in one of two ways. Either we use less energy per person or reduce our population. Neither option is easy. In either case, our established society must change very significantly or we are all doomed. The future is not very appealing in the direction we are traveling, and most people see the problem as something someone else has to solve so that our lives can stay the same.
Yes, we are clearly doomed. Lets all sacrifice ourselves to the temple of L Ron Gore and get it over with.
I can’t believe the useless hysteria going around these days. At the very least go live in a mud hut and stop the panicked nonsense on blogs.
i like that some americans are precupated with gobal warmimng
i from Brasil and we here are very develop about “green fuels”
some time in the future the governator arnold should negociate with Brasil about buy clean fuels.
thanks for the attention.
My global warming solution:
Use electricity as much as possible. That means, plug in hybrids, electric busses and trains. Freight should be moved with electric trains as much as possible. Now where do we get all this electricity? Use renewables as much as possible i.e. hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal. Use nuclear power to make up the rest. To stop global warming all coal, gas, oil power plants must close. Canada, Russia, and Australia have a ridiculous amount of uranium. By many estimates 2000 years worth at current energy use. What about the nuclear waste? First of all, we are approaching a global warming crisis, not a nuclear waste crisis. We must pick the less of two evils. Second, countries like Canada, Russia, Australia have millions of acres of unuseable land. The canadian shield for example can be used to burry nuclear waste is solid rock. If proper care is taken, the waste won’t go anywhere for thousands of years. Oh, and nuclear power is much safer than coal. Many, many more people die in coal mines when compared with the one serious nuclear accident – chenobyl. Three mile island was nothing, maybe 3 people got cancer – get over it. Oh, energy conservation is also very important.
Not one mention of human population size?
I think we should go electric as much as possible and feed our electric plants with all types of fuels (coal, natural gas, wind, water, nuclear and oil). Cars, etc. would all run off electric. Then we could at least centralize these emissions and concentrate on one problem at a time. Your electric bill/usage should rate you on your consumption vs. number of household members, etc. If you are an energy waster then it will be shown and we will start to conserve on a personal level.
What about solar and windpower? No more of this hype about the merits of ethanol and related fuels that are smoke and mirrors. They still emit carbon. We could recharge our electric cars with the electricity generated by solar/wind. Also, as long as there is uncontrolled population growth, energy utilization will inevitably rise. Why don’t world governments consider that as well.
Wind power will never work. Just ask Kennedy, who fought to kill a wind power generation farm off the coast of his coastal estate because he would be able to see it from his house. Plus the kooky environmentalists say the wind turbines have the risk of disturbing migrating birds as they fly through the blades.
Why does it seem that its always the same people who are fighting to cut greenhouse gas emmissions and develop cleaner power generation plants, yet the same people are often against the “fixes” that we come up with.
Wind power is quickly becoming very competitive to traditional power in terms of cost per kilowatt hour. Put them up all over the midwest. Lease land from farmers/ranchers to install wind turbines above their fields while still allowing them to farm below. Nuclear power is a clean alternative to coal and oil. Build more plants. Yes, they have a dangerous by-product, but its a good stepping stone towards truly clean power.
For now, until major upstream changes can be made in our power grid, do your part. Replace your bulbs with compact fluorescent. Add insulation to your home. Do the things that save you money on your electric bill, and you’ll be helping more than you know.
So a 57% increase in energy use automatically means a “nearly 60% increase” in greenhouse gas emissions? I like this fuzzy algore math. You dont think that in the next ~23 years, clean energy will increase in use?
The fact that wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro power is growing exponentially each year: Great
The fact that petro, coal, and nat gas power is becoming cleaner to generate each year with advances in science: Great
Leaving out these fact in your scare tactic article written by a pathetic wanna-be journalist: Priceless
This is what happens when national energy policy is in the hands of Evangelical Christians who believe the #1 priority of mankind should be to fill heaven with as many Christian souls as possible, without any regard for what happens in this world.
To Woody=Idiot: If you had taken the time to read the post, you would have seen that the 60 percent projection – made by the DOE, not me – was based on the assumption that current policies continue and no new limits on greenhouse gases are imposed – limits that would, of course, result in more renewable energy coming online.
To sum up:
We need to use less energy
We need to limit population growth
We need to use clean renewable energy
we need to conserve water
We need to live on less.
until we do the above the world will under go changes that will significantly alter how we go about our daily regime. From a biological/evolutionary standpoint is this so bad. After all no one really mourns the death of the dinasours–its just something that happened on this planet. And in a few million/billion years the sun will super nova and everything will be gone.
about humans
we are carbon neutral meaning the amount of carbon we take in
we give back.
we bury our dead for good reason- instinct-part with the deceased
nature did the same and buried their dead which became huge oil deposits- we brought the dead back alive-the mistake of mankind!
carbon once in the atmosphere is extremly difficult to bury yet again
thus the huge increase since we are burnig fuel and nature (trees and oceans can only absorb that much)
by burning more fuel and depleating more forest we are literally burning the candle on both sides.
what can we do:
my ideas
create global awarness through all information including homepage of google, msn, yahoo and other global websites!!!!
urgently go into nuclear (it is the lesser of the 2 evils- i am not
fond of it but this is right now the only way to both save the world and our lifestyle)- at the same time plant huge windfarms all over the
oceans, tax incentives for solar- renewable energies and plant trees in every possible spot. nyc is planting 1 million now how about 2 million. and this is just the tip of the iceberg the world is running into
Fewer people, less consumption of nature resources, less burden on our mother earth.
Now that’s look at the China’s one child per family policy, it does not look as evil as we think it is, Isn’t it?
Every one has flawed thinking.
There is one renewable energy source every one is forgetting about, the human body.
God said to be fruitful and multiply.
In the future, people will have no problem using criminals and misfits as a fuel source. It is good for society and good for the environment, nothing wrong with natural selection.
Woody you are right. Flamers are whinning because they need to change.
It is unfortunate that some people feel they have to belittle other people to make their point. All we have here are opinions. Some are better than others because they have read more than others. I doubt whether any of these comments have come from anyone who has gone out and taken his own measurements. Lacking that, all we can do is read the reports that other people have generated from their research. Yes, the results vary considerably, but what I have read seems heavily weighted toward a huge energy shortfall in the near future. I can only think of one respectable scientific article that on the positive side that tried to constructively put future energy usage into perspective by showing possible wedges of supply as time goes by. Nuclear was part of it. Wind, solar, biomass and others all were part of it. We could still have possibilities, but we also need to be realistic about our usage. It can’t remain business as usual. That’s simple mathematics. Take a look at any graph that shows our energy usage. Projections show it rising at an increasing rate. Take a look at any graph that shows our population. It shows an ever increasing rate. On top of that, throw in global warming and you have the recipe for catastrophe. I hope I am wrong. I’d like to be wrong on this one, but from what I’ve read in articles that try to do a reasonable job with the facts, things don’t look good. Projecting the future is difficult when so many people want things to continue as they are. The accurate information gets pushed aside as wacky or far out. Well, maybe so. The future will tell. But keep an open mind on the subject and keep reading. Or you could try real research.
With all the 500 billions we have spend on Iraq, We could have provided 10KW of solar energy for every home in the United States.
With that buying power, Solar roofing would go down from $50,000 to $25,000 per home. 1/3 of CO2 production from producing electricity gone. No more coal producing plants.
use more solar, wind energy,alternative energy to save lives for next generations…no more gas, oil please
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