Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Energy: A Tale Of Four Nations

I do an occasional post on Green/Low Carbon/Sustainable matters.  The following four charts are quite illuminating, in my opinion (source: IEA).  Click on each to enlarge.

Total primary energy supply by type


USA: The Dirty Carbo(n)ation


Germany: They're Trying


Denmark: They're Doing It Fast


I have saved the "best" one for last.  What is going on in China is best described as scary as, well, Hell.



China: Heaven Help Them (And The Rest Of Us)

Final note: Notice how Danish total energy consumption remained essentially unchanged in almost 40 years, yet at the same time real GDP grew by 70%.


 What did Denmark do so right? Looking at its energy chart above we observe a tremendous shift away from oil and coal and into natural gas and renewables.  That was no accident;  and it resulted in, among other things, Vestas becoming the world's largest wind turbine company. It's very definitely possible to go green and prosper..


6 comments:

  1. Why's Denmark so advanced?

    http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/88-national/47643-denmark-rife-with-co2-fraud.html

    Yep, its all driven by fraud

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  2. LB,

    The link u supply refers to scams involving CO2 trading. Nothing AT ALL to do with primary energy production.

    I encourage readers to judge for themselves.

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  3. Why didn't you show the graphics for France? Not that I am particularly proud of our 80% nuclear electric energy supply (beware: not related to the total consumption here). But this also proves that if a country want...
    .

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  4. Using Waste, Swedish City Cuts Its Fossil Fuel Use

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/science/earth/11fossil.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

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  5. Without endorsing China's heavy reliance on dirty enegry, I would point out that in the world's current division-of-labour, China has been made the home of much of humanity's heavy industry.

    We can't all be Denmark.

    Arnould, don't apologize for nukepower. The world needs more nuclear fission energy, preferably with a closed fuel cycle (i.e. breeders).

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