Lastly, China points to its impressive improvements in energy efficiency and coal-plant cleanliness in recent years, and its increasingly ambitious commitments to invest in renewable energy sources.
The only way to reverse that trend is to slash oil and coal use by upgrading the efficiency of cars, factories and power plants.
Our joint Clean Energy Research Center is funding new approaches to energy efficiency, clean coal -- which we both need to deal with -- and clean vehicles.
For example, the first phase of the EU Emissions Trading program, which contained several design flaws that have since been rectified, has already been found to have reduced emissions by around 100 million tonnes of CO2 mostly by forcing a shift of load from coal to gas power plants and providing an incentive for inefficient coal plants to improve the thermal efficiency of their boilers.
Coal India is hardly an advertisement for efficiency (see article).
Unlike renewable energy, energy efficiency is already cheaper than coal.
According to Greenwire (April 14, 2010), McCarthy gave assurances best available control technology standards for major GHG emitters would require only efficiency upgrades, not fuel switching from coal to gas.
In an earlier report, the Royal Academy of Engineering had mapped out the scale of the task involved in moving to a low-carbon electricity supply - with a mix of energy efficiency, renewables, nuclear and clean coal.
Natural gas emits 29% less carbon dioxide than oil and 45% less than coal, and it can be used in high-efficiency combined cycle power stations.
Although the country continues to grapple with rising oil prices and experiments with expensive ways to clean up coal, energy consumption can be significantly reduced through energy efficiency.
Samaddar said that many other industries in Poland such as coal mining and transportation rely on healthy steel production and that cost efficiency is paramount.
That means encouraging energy efficiency and promoting domestic energy sources which, aside from coal, tend to be the clean sort, such as solar, wind and biomass.
应用推荐