Coal plants emitted more than ever in 2018, putting Earth in ‘deep trouble’

Global energy experts released grim findings Monday, saying that not only are planet-warming carbon-dioxide emissions still increasing, but the world’s growing thirst for energy has led to higher emissions from coal-fired power plants than ever before.

In this May 25, 2017, photo, the Milton R. Young Station
  lignite coal-fired power plant near Center, N.D., glows
 as dusk blankets the North Dakota prairie landscape. A new
 report shows that coal plants emitted more than ever in 2018.

Energy demand around the world grew by 2.3 per cent over the past year, marking the most rapid increase in a decade, according to the report from the International Energy Agency. To meet that demand, largely fueled by a booming economy, countries turned to an array of sources, including renewables.

But nothing filled the void quite like fossil fuels, which went toward nearly 70 per cent of the skyrocketing electricity demand, according to the agency, which analyzes energy trends on behalf of 30 member countries, including the United States.

Read the story from The Spokesman-Review by Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis - “Coal plants emitted more than ever in 2018, putting Earth in ‘deep trouble’.”

'It's getting hotter', The Economist warns

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AVING the planet is now a matter of a few clicks—at least on a small scale.

On September 22nd the UN’s Climate Change Secretariat launched Climate Neutral Now, a website that estimates an individual’s carbon footprint based on whereabouts, recycling habits, energy use and so on.

Offsetting any resulting guilt is easy: the site takes donations to fund clean development projects. Your correspondent paid $24 to a facility capturing methane from pig dung to cover the carbon-dioxide emissions she had caused during the past year.

The initiative is one of many intended to spur action on greenhouse-gas emissions in the run-up to climate talks in Paris at the end of the year. Some seem quite successful: in recent weeks around 2,000 individuals and 400 organisations have committed to stop investing in firms that produce fossil fuels.

More important, countries have responded to a shift in climate-change policy after the failure of negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009: rather than trying to agree on mandatory emissions reductions, they were asked to say by October 1st what they were willing to do.

ReadThe Economist story - “It’s getting hotter”.