MrMakabar

In Pakistan the Lahore High Court was able to rule that the government was in violation of climate protection. So I guess rule of law is better in Pakistan then it is in the US.

The EU Fuel Quality Directive has certain rules regarding fuel emissions and one of the options is to buy these Upstream Emission Certificates to show that the fuel was pumped out of the ground with relativly low emissions. Since EU oil production is low, this means production somewhere else has to be cleaner.

The smart move would be to ban those certificates and force them to use direct air capture or e-fuels instead.

There is a legal system and companies can be sued for damages. Having a lot of this in a very offcial place like the Senat helps. Also way to many still believe fossil fuel lies.

Big fossil fuel spending a lot to defend their profits. Good news is that once they are broken, they loose influence.

The list includes:

• Germany's emissions hit 70-year low as it reduces reliance on coal => 4-months ago
• Germany primary energy consumption drops by 9.0% and emissions by 11% in Q1-3 compared to 2022 => 6-months ago
• German Primary Energy Consumption drops by 7% in first half of 2023 compared to 2022 => 9-months ago

The reason for that is a bunch of coal power plants being kept on the grid to keep the grid stable due to a cut of gas supply from Russia. However a fairly large drop in general electricity consumption, meant that coal electricity generation dropped massively. Also 8 wind turbines are a rounding error for a country like Germany and are easily made up for with new ones built in other locations. So as the Guardian states in the first link:

while coal’s share dropped to 26% from 34%, according to the federal network agency.

With resurgence you mean 33.2% drop in electricity generation from coal between 2022 and 2023 and shutting down 15 coal power plants this year already? Cause that is what is actually happening.

France had 0.9TWh of coal electricity production last year. That is 0.5% of electricity generation.

With carbon pricing it becomes more attractive. Otherwise it has no chance.

It is the most realistic way of making steel without fossil fuels. Also when you use fossil gas to make steel, you first crack it into hydrogen. That part of the process works very well and on scale. The only really important thing is to make hydrogen in a green way and that is difficult.

Between 2012 and 2022 electricity generation from coal has gone down from 2400TWh to 1427TWh for the G7. Most of that comes down to the US, Japan and Germany in that order.The UK and France have basicaly no coal left, besides some rarely running plants and Italy and Canada do exit coal a bit slowler, but do not have too much left anymore.

To look a bit closer. The US has the inflation reduction act and is building out renewables at record pace, while gas is killing coal in most places. The speed in decline is rather rapid. Japan has closed down its nuclear power plants after Fukushima, but is restarting them about now, so a decline in coal consumption is possible. Germany did phase out all its nuclear power plants until last year, but still managed to have a decline in coal electricity generation, due to building out renewables fairly quickly. This means that should go even faster.

So yeah, this might happen. Japan is the one to watch though. It really does not built much clean energy these days.

Great to hear that Japan is phasing out coal.

It looks really great. Implemented policies are for nearly stable emissions. Better then growth for sure, but still not even close to enough.