Renewable Energy Revolution: Declining Costs, Surging Capacity

[NoOneMan]

4. Does it?

Let's assume energy consumption grows at a steady rate of 2% a year for the foreseeable future. This means that each year, our fossil fuel consumption grows at 1% - (the rate of retirement of FF infrastructure). So, this means we are still burning more and more fossil fuels every single year, as long as the existing fossil fuel furnaces & generators go offline slower than new generation is coming online.

China and India are building 4 new coal plants every week. Are 4 or more coal plants across the globe going offline each week? If not, we are making no ground.

Its great if we can lower the carbon intensity of our energy, but its not going to help our current trajectory if we do not lower aggregate emissions. Frankly, we could have 99% of new power generation being "green", but if that 1% of new "dirty" generation more than offsets retirement of old infrastructure, we are still headed for a very, very warm world.

We need to reduce emissions. Yesterday.