Rapid fuel switching from coal to natural gas through effective carbon pricing (repository copy), Grant Wilson, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Sheffield and Iain Staffell, Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, consider how global carbon emissions from fossil fuels stand at almost 37 GtCO2/yr (carbon dioxide equivalent) and have grown by an average 23 2.4% per year so far this century.
The authors found that:
“While emissions had stabilised between brazil rcs data 2014 and 2016 they appear to be increasing once again, intensifying the need to reduce global fossil fuel consumption. Switching away from fossil fuels is recognised as a ‘key mitigation strategy’ and ‘of crucial importance’ in the transport sector, but switching between fossil fuels in the power sector lacks such recognition as it is incompatible with longer-term deep decarbonisation.”
The authors used the CO2 Emissions from Fuel combustion data from the IEA to understand annual electricity generation from coal, gas and nuclear generation, concluding that switching between fossil fuels could provide a significant boost to global decarbonisation but that fuel switching is no silver bullet, and many barriers can explain why only a small percentage of the estimated potential has been realised thus far.
“Fuel switching can only ever be a temporary stepping stone towards a low-carbon energy system.”