United Nations Report on Clean Energy: The “Renewables Bible”
Are you tracking the big numbers behind renewable energy? If so, here’s an article on a United Nations report on clean energy that you’ll find quite meaningful. Maybe “meaningful” is the wrong word to describe a report that is called the “Renewables Bible.” Wow, high praise indeed; perhaps I too could benefit from a bit more aggressive labeling of my writing. But seriously – the Bible?
In any case, according to the article, the world added around 140 gigawatts of power from renewable sources between 2008 and 2009, bringing the total up to around 300 gigawatts — perhaps a good start, but something of a “drop in the bucket” against our 15 terawatt total consumption. From here, the UN examined 164 scenarios in which the different flavors of clean energy could expand over the next few decades.
In some of the best cases, renewable energy would account for up to 77 percent of global energy usage by 2050. But the bottom line is that, if we’re to head in that direction, this shift will cost global markets around $12.3 trillion by 2030.
Yes, a commitment like this will require the allocation of huge financial resources. But let’s look at a few benefits. If it’s made, the investment in renewable energy would:
1) Stimulate the world economy to an unprecedented level, with huge growth in employment rates, tax-bases, and GDPs.
2) Mitigate a huge threat to the health and safety of all seven billion of us. The noxious output of coal plants alone kills more than 20,000 people annually and dooms hundreds of thousands of others to horrible diseases. The hard financial cost (not to mention the suffering) is estimated at $250 billion per year.
3) Address some questions that have no other answer in its absence, e.g., how is the world to deal with the needs of the 2.3 billion people of China and India as many of them become consumers for the first time, begin to drive cars, use HVAC, etc?
But can we imagine a world that is not dependent on the struggle for oil? Can we become a civilization that doesn’t devastate its environment? Could the US become a country that does not actively bankrupt itself borrowing $1 billion per day and sending it to enemy regimes?
Seems like a worthwhile goal to me.
Perhaps it should be re-written..? Now that everyone is getting their feet web from Global changes. Understanding how fear today in this Social Freedom Decade does not do the job as it has always been done in a suppressed world or a less educated world. As a resourceful world, it is written our problems when looked at as opportunities will be resolved by individuals anywhere in the world with God given gifts and visions of truths.
Bible? Far from it! Global thinking will have to change in every sector before we can come close to those goals. On the other hand. If it was necessity, we would be 100% renewable by 2015. So what is the hold up?
“So what is the hold up?” Can you spell G-R-E-E-D and F-E-A-R? Nevermind, I did it for you… 🙂 Have a nice day!
In a way I believe in some kind of an honest monarchy (am I dreaming?) where the head of state spend his/her lifetime making sure greed & fear are put aside in order to make sure benign projects go all the way to the end to benefit next generations. Four years in power is too short period for that purpose. Politicians have to have to hurry up and legislate in their own interests keeping the status-quo.
There is only one truth. The world we see with our bodies eyes would try to convince you otherwise. But even from that limited perspective, there may be much to improve. Maintaining a mind at peace is a requirement. This world is dedicated to turmoil and conflict. Such a perspective in a natural result of believing that we human beings, however elevated we may esteme our development to be, are a effect of this world instead of it’s cause. We point out the tradjedy of the world dramas we love so much and then convince ourselves that we are powerless to do anything about it. Yet, vision is certainly a choice. One way to look at it is; the biodynamic computer we call mind has to have an operating system to arrange it’s thoughts in memory. If the operating system (OS), is fearful and all the atributes that align with that perspective, then, the resulting vision will be conflict, sickness, and death. Yet there is a core OS known as Love. It may have other names. The good news is that this OS is more like ROM memory. You have it always. The bad news is, you have adopted ubiquitous applications to try to overwrite your core thought system. It merely succeeds in obscuring it, sometimes quite well and to our peril and even to many deaths of the bodies who believe they are separate and alone and their interests are not really the same as others. Yet, all mind is one, if it be true and lasting forever. You may disagree if you find this unacceptable to your mind as it is. That is OK. Truth merely waits until you are ready to get with it. It is not debatable. Not up for votes. It merely is. What seems to require learning is the letting go of the “applications” we have used to obscure true mind awareness.
Any questions?
A good philosophy leads to a sound mind, which leads to positive actions. That’s why the world is messed up: Too many bad philosophers.
Bible? I don’t think so. The Bible contains miracles and since our miracles weren’t included, the term “Bible” is probably less than appropriate.
when i go to the farmer’s market I feel hopeful, when i go to the grocery store, not so much.
when i listen to the birds I feel hopeful, when i listen to the news, not so much.
when i see kids playing outdoors i feel hopeful, when i see kids gaming and texting, not so much.
part of the situation is about where i choose to put my attention, part of the situation is what there is to pay attention to.
Craig, thank you for this report. I like what Robert states in the first comment and would like to add to it. As you are aware, in the garages and dorm rooms of today, there are many ‘opportunities’ that if brought to fruition would solve the energy needs of today. In fact, both of us know of some that could be in the marketplace by 2015 if the additional R&D funding is acquired.
I assume this is the same corrupt UN that published UN’s fallacious 2007 report on climate change/nee/global warming? You know, the one which the research director, Phil Jones of East Anglia University in England, had to resign under pressure due to some leaked emails.
After resigning, Jones said that they had falsified global temperature data by “tricking” the computer model show false, higher temperatures to protect all their friends who were making millions doing research on climate change/nee/global warming. Later, Jones told the media in London last year that “there has been virtually no global warming during the last 15 years.” (Yet others, including the Catholic Church, still use that 2007 report as a valid source. Amazing.)
Is that the type of “Bible” the UN claims to have published on renewables? Where and how did they collect the data on which their “bible” was based?
Bible? That’s the height of arrogance — and ignorance.
I am going to the Farmers Market , then work in my yard, not to hide my head, but to find truth. I suggest we all look not to a “Bible” but to with in. It seems a lot of information available but I have a hard time seeing the light.
Craig, I’m curious, what are those ‘enemy’ regimes you speak of?
I mean Chavez is a bit of a buffoon, and has no love for the US, but an active enemy? I am unaware that North Korea is oil rich, And since the US imports no oil from Iran, that leaves the 4 biggest US oil imports, Canada ,Saudi Arabia, Mexico,Nigeria.
Yes, well I can see your point with Canada!
Allies, Craig, the US imports from allies!
See: http://2greenenergy.com/13256/13256/. Thanks.
Craig, that’s really not much of a justification for calling US allies, enemies, simply because in some vague manner, some oil producing nations do not have a system of government that conforms to a US idea of democracy. Nor is it good enough to describe ‘enemies of freedom’ as enemies of the US. Many countries would regard many US policies as an enemy of freedom, certainly of self-determination.
Oil,the oil market and oil companies, are not in themselves evil, or even harbingers of evil. OPEC did not invent Nuclear weapons. Nor did OPEC or any oil company produce the sophisticated military hardware now proliferating the world. Somebody had to produce the ‘Lasers in the Jungle’. Not the Oil Companies, not the Automotive Industry. These high tech dangerous weapons were all developed by Governments, paid for willingly with taxpayer funds, and then sold to OPEC and poor developing nations, by government supported agencies. (The US is not alone in the arms industry the UK,Sweden, PRC, Israel, Russia, and a whole host of industrial nations produce these weapons of (Mass) destruction) . It’s now far beyond the capacity of even the richest corporation to privately develop such weaponry. How you can blame a few, otherwise poor nations for the ills of the world, because they have been fortunate enough to possess one asset, oil, is pitiful.
Once the US was admired and respected by the entire Islamic world. Every Arab nation looked to the US and US corporations as honest anti-imperialist traders and benefactors. What changed? Not oil, not oil technology, not US oil companies.
What changed was an uncritical, unchallenged, unconditional US policy of support for Israel. Not just Israel as State, but a zealous, Zionist ,expansionist, oppressive Israeli state, that has succeeded in changing US attitudes and policies, away from US traditions, into a US that not only tolerates but shares Israels endorsement of torture as an instrument of social control for it’s occupied peoples.
Where is the ‘democratic’ “freedom” in these policies? If you were a Palestinian and informed of your eviction from the home and land your family had owned since the time of the Crusades,to live in squalor and hardship, denied any redress, simply the fact that you belonged to the wrong race and religion, to make room for a family from Brooklyn, or Lipvostok. That these anti-human rights policies were not only unopposed, but endorsed by US policy wouldn’t you regard the US as an enemy of freedom? The supporters of Qaddafi can argue, with some justification, that the US and France are seeking to depose him, because he decided to sell oil to the PRC rather than France. (There is a some creditable evidence to support such a scenario).
Unconditional support, not just support, but uncritical, unconditional support of Israel, has brought the US into conflict with the Arab/Islamic world. The extremists would have died out long ago in the face of US culture and modern communications, but for the bitter, humiliating injustice, hypocrisy of US double standards in relation to Israel, that keep fuelling the hatred of the US.
Israel is a state which sponsors terrorist actions, not by individual deluded fanatics, but by state trained and sponsored agents. Israel was born in the wake of a terrorist action.(King Hotel Bombing). Until the US and US citizens sympathetic to Israel, can understand that Israel has no more moral virtue than any other modern state, (lately a good deal less) the sooner US citizens can begin the process of making peace with the Arab/Islamic world.
I agree with a great deal of this. Please see the third stanza on my poem here: http://2greenenergy.com/ode-to-a-moral-country/11735/.
Man, these posts are really bouncing off the walls… This is exciting, where are we going to go next I wonder?
Craig; well maybe the estimates are in error, our little co has spent the last 31 months designing a vert turbine that will turn a 10 megawatt generator; we’re getting ready to build a 10% model for testing and eval by the nrel. Will let you know what happens.
thanks, ron
Does ‘clean’ energy really exist or does intoning the word act like a salve for those of us who will not acknowledge the privilege of our lifestyle? What is renewable about turbines that rarely generate beyond 30% of capacity if the wind blows at all, that require fossil fuel backup generation, that make local people ill and devalue property, that take farmland out of production for 1000 ton concrete bases, roads, power lines, or destroy acquifers Take note that big oil companies are also following the cash trail, not to promote ethical outcomes but to keep the shareholders happy. The European experience with turbines should have taught us in North American thirty years later that unless you are producing hydro electricity green energy is largely a fleeting fantasy. Dream on.