Nuclear energy key to decarbonising Europe, says EESC

Modern energi consumption confuses me. There has never been more wind and solar, coal fired plants are almost a thing of the past. Everything is becoming increasingly energy efficient, yet we produce more CO2?

Where is the fossile fuel being burnt?

Roughly, greenhouse gases are, a quarter from (animal) agriculture, quarter from energy, quarter from industry (cement/steel etc), and a quarter from transport.

Mostly, what you are seeing is that the half of the world living in the India-SEA-China circle [1] are living much better lives, which requires far more energy then living as subsistence farmers did. In the G7, CO2 emissions have declined (but not as fast as they need to stay below the 2C target) but the rest of the world is emitting more: during the negotiations for the Kyoto Accords in 1998 G7 countries produced about half of the world's CO2 and now they produce about a quarter. That's mostly because the rest of the world started emitting more and only a little because of drops in the amount produced by G7 countries.

There is obviously major ethical issues here. The rich, already developed world- having emitted enormous quantities of CO2 to get there- telling poor, undeveloped people living as subsistence farmers that they can't use any more energy because of all the CO2 already in the atmosphere is a really hard argument to make, locking them into being poor forever while the developed world benefits from all that CO2 consumption. But on the other hand, by skipping right to large scale solar, maybe those inside the circle can do a better job?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriepieris_circle

> Where is the fossile fuel being burnt?

China 50%, India 11%. And that is based on their official numbers so probably a lot more.

https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-count...

i couldnt believe that animal ag was the same as power, so i looked it up. Animal ag is ~14%, power is ~35%. so not close to equivilant, but ag is still a way bigger percentage than i would have guessed!

CO2 per kWh is steadily going down, but kWhs consumed is still going up, especially in developing nations like China and India where _a lot_ of people live.