THE CONTROL AND COST OF ENERGY

The evolution of the energy mix has been associated with changing structures in the production and supply of various energy sources, leading to different forms and degrees of control, and rising costs generated by a combination of increasing costs of production, market power of producers, and heightened environmental effects.  

The Control of Energy

According to Smil (2010), for most of pre-history and early human history work was done exclusively through human muscle power, the energy converter was the human body, and the energy source was the food obtained first from hunting and gathering and later from cultivation. The only extra-somatic source of energy was wood used for cooking and heating. Around 8,000 BCE, the domestication of cattle increased the number of energy converters, which further expanded two millennia later with the domestication of horses. Working animals also changed the energy mix because both cattle and horses converted into kinetic energy biomass not utilized by humans. These conditions lasted well past the Middle Ages. In what I call the first Renewable Energy Age, there was little separation between the producer and consumer of energy, even if we exclude the energy from food consumed by humans. In the rural areas, where most of the population resided, fuelwood and fodder were produced or collected by the fuel users. Trade in energy took place in urban areas, but the supplies were delivered from short distance. The decentralization of energy production and distribution, and the associated absence of market power, was one of the main features of this energy age.

The separation between supplier and consumer began to widen with expanded consumption of coal in the first phase of the Great Energy Transformation. Coal deposits were ubiquitous and did not grow like trees and grass. They were extensive, located in specific areas, and their extraction required large financial commitments. Coal was a tradable commodity. Still, the trade was largely localized. Although it created large wealth for a limited number of families, it did not give rise to market control in part because it was still competing with charcoal in urban centers and fuelwood in rural areas.    

A similar situation developed in the case of oil until 1960, a year in which five countries �" Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela �" formed a cartel known as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for the purpose of stabilizing (euphemism for controlling) the oil market. As other oil producing countries realized the advantages of market power, membership in OPEC expanded over time and currently includes eight additional countries: Angola, Algeria, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates. As its market power began to wane, resulting in lower oil prices, OPEC made special arrangements with 10 additional countries for the purpose of coordinating oil production: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, South Sudan, and Sudan. This new organization is known as OPEC+. The implications of market power in the oil sector will be explored in the next section. Here it suffices to note that the market power of oil producers is made possible by the unique role of oil products in transportation and the absence of alternatives. This role leads to a price-inelastic demand for oil (limited response of quantity demanded even to large price increases) and a situation where price increases result in higher revenues.

The same path was not followed by the producers of natural gas, for a variety of reasons. Natural gas reserves are more evenly distributed than oil’s. While oil supplied the needs of a sector �" transportation - where up to now there has been no competition, natural gas is used in a competitive market. It is used primarily in the heating of building and electricity generation, functions that can be performed by a variety of fuels, first coal and increasingly renewable resources. Moreover, technological developments �" primarily the liquefaction of natural gas �" have reduced the obstacles to its worldwide distribution.

Because wind and solar power are ubiquitous, attempts to form a cartel on these two energy sources could not be met with success. In this case market power could exist only for materials needed for harnessing these energy sources, if they naturally in short supply. Even in this case, technological solutions would render any potential market power ephemeral.      

ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL COSTS

For consumers, the cost of energy reflected in the prices they pay includes only the direct costs to firms for the production, transformation, and distribution of energy plus the taxes imposed by governments. For them, an energy crisis is identified with rising energy prices, at the pump and on utilities bills. For the planet and for society as a whole, the costs are more extensive and more severe.  In this section I focus on four major costs of the current energy mix: climate change, control of energy, indirect renewable energy costs, and the concentration of power.

Climate Change. The connection between the energy mix and the cost of climate change is complex and involves several steps: the production of greenhouse gases, the relationship of greenhouse gases to climate change, and the economic, environmental, and social costs of global warming.

Greenhouse Gases (GHG).  These are gases that are produced by a variety of processes on Earth. In the atmosphere they absorb and trap some of the sun’s infrared radiation creating a greenhouse effect that raises global temperatures. Most of these gases are produced by human activity. They include four major components: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and industrial gases. Table III-1 shows that annual GHG emissions rose at an average rate of 1.7 percent per year from 1950 to 2021.  A substantial deceleration from 1950-1975 to 1975-2000 was followed by a small acceleration during the following 21 years. A similar pattern is found for CO2 but with stronger growth. Over the 71 years from 1950 tom 2021, annual CO2 emissions rose at an average annual rate fifty percent higher than that of GHG emissions. As a result, the share of CO2 emissions expanded from roughly one-third in 1950 to two-thirds in 2021.  

Table III-1. Global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions, Selected Years from 1950 to 2021

                                     GHG                               CO2                     CO2/GHG              CO2-C

                             GT        % Change           GT        % Change                             PPM       % Change

1950                     16.13                                6.00                               37.2             311.50                                   

1975                     30.17                              17.05                               56.5             331.36

1950-1975                              2.54                                4.27                 0.79

2000                     41.34                              25.45                              61.6              369.64 

1975-2000                             1.27                                 1.62                 1.53 

2021                     54.59                              37.12                             68.0             416.43

2000-2021                             1.33                                1.81                  2.33

1950-2021                             1.73                                2.60                  1.48

Note: CO2-C = CO2 concentration in parts per million (PPM); GT = gigatons; % change = average annual percentage change.

Source: Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, “Annual Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much Do We Emit Each Year?” ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions; The Nature Conservancy, “How Much Carbon Was in the Atmosphere When You Were Born?” 

 

Table III-2 provides information on the sources of GHG emissions. In 2016, nearly three-quarters of CO2 emissions were produced in the production and use of energy and an additional 18 percent in agriculture, forestry, and land use for a combined total of 92 percent. Within the energy category, one-third of emissions originated in the industrial sector, with buildings and transportation contributing 24 and 22 percent, respectively, for a combined total of 79 percent.  

 

Table III-2. Global GHG Emissions: Shares by Sector, 2016

        (a): Percent by Sector

Energy           Agriculture^a         Industry^b            Waste

73.2               18.4                      5.2                      3.2

       (b): Percent within Energy

Industry      Buildings      Transport     Unallocated^c     Leakages^d      Agriculture^e       

33.1             23.9               22.1            10.7                   7.9                 2.3        

Notes: ^a Agriculture, forestry, and land use; ^b direct industrial processes; ^c unallocated fuel combustion; ^d leakages from oil and gas production; ^e agriculture and fishing.

Source: Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, “Emissions by Sector,” ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector.

 

Table III-3 focuses on CO2 emissions. Panel (a) shows that in 2019 the leading source of CO2 emissions was the generation of electricity and heat with a share of

 43 percent, followed by transportation (22%) and industry (21%) for a combined total of 86 percent. In 2021, coal accounted for 40 percent of CO2 emissions, with oil and gas adding 32 and 21 percent, respectively, for a combined total of 93 percent.

 

Table III-3. Global CO2 Emissions: Shares by Sector and by Fuel

                                    (a): Percent by Sector

Year                Electricity + Heat        Transportation       Industry       Other

2019               42.8                              22.3                       21.3              13.6

                                    (b): Percent by Fuel

                       Coal             Oil              Gas          Other

2021               40.4              31.9            21.3         6.4

Source: Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, “CO2 Emissions by Sector,” ourworldindata.org/CO2-emissions-by-sector; Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, “CO2 Emissions by Sector,” ourworldindata.org/CO2-emissions-by-fuel.    

CO2 is not dissipated in the atmosphere, but is accumulated over time. The concentration of CO2 is measured in parts per million (PPM). The last column of table III-1 shows that the CO2 concentration rose at an average rate of 1.5 percent per year. Moreover, the rate of accumulation has accelerated over time. For most of human history before the expansion of industrialization after WWII, CO2 concentration was maintained at levels below 300PPM and even in 1950 it remained slightly higher than this level. This suggests that the optimal concentration of CO2 for ecological and human health is in the neighborhood of 300 PPM.¹ By 2021 the 300 PPM mark had been exceeded by more than one-third. This rapid expansion of the CO2 concentration had enormous consequences for our planet.

Global Warming. The Earth climate system is in balance when the amount of sun energy it receives is equal to the amount of energy returning to space. When these two amounts differ, we say that there is an Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI). If this imbalance is positive �" the amount arriving exceeds the amount returning �" heat is absorbed by the planet, creating the Earth Heat Inventory. Nine-tenth of this heat accumulates in the oceans, and the rest on land, the cryosphere, and the atmosphere. Research shows a positive trend in the value of EEI over the past 50 years. The average value of EEI rose from 0.5 during 1971-2006 to 0.79 in the 2006-2018 period and 0.89 during 2010-2022.² As increasing amounts of solar radiations are trapped on Earth, global temperatures tend to rise. Studies show a positive trend in global temperatures over the past two decades. On average during the 2013-2023 period, global surface temperatures were 1.15 degrees centigrade higher than during the baseline period from 1850 to 1900, higher than the estimated 0.91 degrees from 2003 to 2013, an increase of 26 percent in a ten year-span (2008 versus 2018) (as above, table 4).

An alternative indicator of global warming is the deviation from the same baseline period of the land annual maximum temperatures (excluding Antarctica). Average values of this indicator by decade since the 1950s are shown in table III-4. The increase in the average maximum land temperature over successive decades is notable in the last column of this table. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the deviation from the baseline value was stable and small, amounting to about one-third of a degree centigrade. This deviation began to accelerate in the 1980s and has continued ever since, reaching 1.7 degrees during 2012-2021 decade, a value about four times higher than during the 1950-1980 period. We also notice in the second column that the range of deviations expanded over successive decades, indicating greater temperature variations within a decade. The range of deviations in the 1990s was double that in the 1950s. There seems to be no respite to the extreme temperatures According to a NASA study, July 2023 was the hottest month since 1880.”³    

Table III-4. Estimated Deviations of Annual Maximum Temperatures by Decade since the 1950s

Decade                                 Deviations from the 1850-1900 Baseline in ⁰C

        Range withing Decade            Average^a

1950s            0 �" 0.6                            0.30  

1960s         0.1 �" 0.7                            0.40

1970s         0.1 �" 0.7                            0.40

1980s         0.2 �" 1.2                            0.70

1900s         0.3 �" 1.5                            0.90

2000s              1.23^b

2010s              1.64^b

2012-2021      1.71^b

Notes: ^aauthor’s calculations assuming a linear increase withing range; ^bfrom Forster et al. (2023), Table 8.

Source: Forster et al. (2023), Figure 6 and Table 8.

                                     

Human Impact. The climate change record presented so far suggests that human activity may have been the major determinant of global warming. As GHG concentration, especially CO2, began to exceed optimal levels for ecological and human sustainability by increasing amounts over time, more and more solar radiation was trapped inside the atmosphere. This phenomenon generated expanding positive Earth Energy Imbalances which, in turn, led to rising land and ocean temperatures. How much of the observed global warming was caused by human activity (was anthropogenic)? An answer to this question is provided by a recent report prepared by a large team of researchers (Forster at al., 2023). As shown in table III-5, global warming is entirely caused by human activity.

Table III-5. Determinants of Global Warming

Determinant           Average Deviation in ⁰C^a

          2010-2019        2013-2022        2017         2022

 

Observed                                     1.07                  1.15                   

Anthropogenic                            1.07                  1.15                1.13         1.26

Natural   0.05                  0.04                0.04         0.03

Note: ^aDeviation from baseline in 1850-1900

Source: Forster (2023), Table 6.

     

Global Warming and Climate Change. Global warming refers to an increase in global temperatures. It is both a component and a determinant of climate change which refers to long-term movements in a variety of climatic factors, primarily precipitation and wind patterns. The effects of climate change induced by global warming are complex, pervasive, and ubiquitous. The most significant ones are severe droughts, widespread flooding, catastrophic storms, melting of glaciers and polar ice, and rising sea levels. Regarding the last two effects, records show that the sea level had increased by 1.7 millimiters per year during most of the 20^th century, but this value nearly doubled to 3.2 millimiters since 1993. In addition, the average thickness of glaciers has shrunk by more than 60 percent since 1980 and the area under ice has receded by 40 percent since 1979.  There were 37 major global weather events in 2022 and they caused damages worth $360 billion.⁴ In addition, both the frequency and cost of major climate events (damages exceeding $1 billion each) rose dramatically from the1980s to the 2020s.⁵ The number of major climate events increased by a factor of 4 from the 1980 decade to the 2010-2019 decade. In the first three years of the 2020 decade, there were 60 such events, nearly double the number of such events during the entire 1980s. If the trend in the first three years continues unabated for the rest of the 2020 decade, the total number of major weather events will reach 200, a number more than six times higher than during the 1980s decade. The cost of such events has skyrocketed even when inflation and population growth are taken into account. The real cost of the damage generated by the major weather events, adjusted for inflation and population growth, estimated for the 2020 decade is nearly 5 times that during the 1980s decade.  

The health effects of climate change are also more devastating and operate through various channels. Floods, drought, fires, and wide temperature fluctuations impact negatively food production and food security. According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2023), which refers to the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 770 million people suffered from hunger in 2020, mostly in Asia and Africa. The number of people experiencing food insecurity increased by nearly 100 million from the average during 1981-2010 to 2020.  One-third of the global population, predominantly in the poorer regions, lacks safe drinking water and more than 10 percent is infected annually with foodborne illnesses. A third of the latter are children. These conditions will be aggravated by global warming. Temperature increases, especially the hot summers that are transforming many areas of the world into nearly uninhabitable places, are causing a rising tide of heat-related deaths, and 37 percent of these deaths can be attributed to climate change. These health effects extend beyond physical conditions and include mental health. Unbearable heat and frequent catastrophic climatic events cause anxiety and some cases post-traumatic stress that harm a person’s mental and emotional conditions and may even disrupt the relationships of social support.

These effects are not shared equally among all people, but tend to impact mostly the weakest members of society. As pointed out by the World Health Organization (2023), nearly half of the world population lives in areas with the greatest risks from climate change, and they reside largely in the poorest countries. Because of their meager economic conditions, they contribute minimally to global warming, but they bear most of the burden of its effects.        

The costs of weather events caused by climate change are not expected to abate for a long time under realistic assumption about future emission because of the existing high level of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. According to Usher (2019), (Bruce Usher, 2019), Renewable Energy, New York: Columbia University Press) under a “business as usual” scenario the CO2 concentration is projected to rise from 416 PPM in 2021 to 480 in 2050. The transition to renewable energy would simply reduce this increase to about 450 PPM. This means that the climate sins of the parents will continue to be paid by their children even if they become ecologically virtuous. However, they can mitigate the price they pay by rejecting the behavior of their parents.

The Renewables Footprint. Although the renewable energy resources are very large and inexhaustible, their development is not free of costs, both financial and ecological. The generation of electricity from renewables requires devises that contain a variety of minerals and storing this energy for use, particularly in transportation, requires more minerals. Thus, the decarbonization of the economy involves in part a shift from one type of non-renewable resource to another. The question is: do we improve environmental health and the ecological balance when we shift the energy mix in favor of renewables?  To address this, researchers have developed a measure called Total Material Requirement (TMR). Watari et al. (2019) have used this indicator to analyze the ecological effects of a shift in the energy mix from fossil fuels to renewables. They compared the TMR of two energy scenarios. The first is called RTS and it models the maintenance of the current energy system associated with the voluntary targets pledged by a number of countries in the Paris Agreement. The second is called 2DS and is based on a path to decarbonization developed by the IEA. They also divided their analysis between production (the generation of electricity) and consumption (transportation only).

With respect to electricity, under the RTS scenario the level of the TMR indicator will increase by16 percent from 2021 to 2025. Renewables will account for a small portion of this increase because their share of electricity generation is not projected to expand dramatically. In the 2DS scenario, the TMR indicator is cut in half from 2021 to 2050 primarily because the use of coal in electricity generation is projected to plummet during this period. This means that, with respect to electricity generation, policies of decarbonization relying on the replacement of fossil fuels with renewables would tend to reduce the total material requirements and improve the ecological balance. A different conclusion is reached in the case of transportation. In the RTS scenario, the TMR indicator doubles from 2021 to 2050 and most of this increase is due to the expansion of renewables as the moderate increase in gasoline consumption will have a small effect on TMR. Under the 2DS scenario, the increase in TMR is only sixty percent, mainly because the contribution of gasoline consumption declines.

The general conclusion is that a policy of de-carbonization will tend to reduce TMR in electricity generation and raise it in transportation. Moreover, while the RTS scenario is dominated by flows of energy resources, the 2DS scenario is dominated by mineral resources. Thus, decarbonization may not lead to a greater ecological balance by simply shifting from an ecological negative that generates global warming and climate change to a negative that disrupts the environment in the countries and localities where the needed minerals are extracted and processed. This change will also affect the global distribution of the ecological impact. While the effects of global warming tend to be ubiquitous, the ecological effects of the expansion of mineral production will be more localized. Since these minerals are found more frequently in lower income countries, a policy of de-carbonization based on the expansion of renewable will shift the ecological cost of economic development from the more developed to the less developed countries.         

The Control of Energy. Energy resources are not like any other tradeable good �" such as refrigerators, cars, or apparel. Because they are fundamental to human survival and they are not dispersed equally throughout the globe, they have become weapons in the geopolitical arena as resource-rich countries try to gain power over the energy market. The most recent example is the use of natural gas by the Russian Federation in the early stages of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Having cultivated Europe’s dependence in its natural supply, Russia leveraged its market power to influence the decisions of European countries. This strategy worked well during the 2014 annexation of Crimea and may have worked as well in its full invasion of the Ukraine had the United States maintained the more neutral stance they took in 2014.

Of the three major primary energy sources in the current energy mix �" the three fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas �" oil is the only one with a formalized institution of market control: first OPEC and later OPEC+.

OPEC exercised its power for the first time in October 1973 when it refused to sell oil to the United States for its support of Israel during the Yom Kippur war. The effects of this action on the price of oil were immediate and strong: the price of oil, which had declined from $33 per barrel in January 1950 to $25 in May 1973, nearly tripled in January 1974 as it rose to $67.  Although the embargo was lifted six months later, its effects were felt all over the globe as real GDP growth was reduced to 1.8 percent in 1974 and less than one percent in 1975, a fraction of its post-war trend.    

More recently, the power of OPEC+ has become evident in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to the pandemic, oil prices (WTI) plummeted to $25 per barrel in March 2020. As world economies began to recover from lockdowns, oil prices rose, reaching $73 per barrel in April 2021. In response to production controls by OPEC+, oil prices continued to rise and reached $120 per barrel in May 2022. As they began declining towards a low level of $71 per barrel in June 2023, OPEC+ in April 2023 announced a production cut of over 1.5 million barrels per day for the rest of the year. As a result, oil prices reversed trend and approached $90 per barrel in September 2023. The effects of the market power of OPEC+ are significant and widespread. The increase in oil prices by a factor of 2.4 from September 2021 to May 2022 was a major contributor to worldwide inflation and the more recent oil price spike will make the task of the monetary authorities more difficult. In addition, if price increases have significant distributional impacts. Internationally, there is a large transfer of wealth from oil importing to oil exporting countries. Nationally, high oil prices generate large profits for oil companies and these profits benefit primarily the shareholders of these companies, affecting the degree of wealth inequality.

The Concentration of Power

I have suggested earlier that for most of human history the supply of energy was “democratic” in the sense that the control over energy resources was dispersed. Urban dwellers did require to purchase fuel, but they were a small proportion of the total population and the suppliers of energy were small businesses. In the rural areas, where the majority of the population lived, the energy consumer controlled his/her own supply. This pattern was not disturbed by the expansion of coal after the industrial. Coal production did entail a certain degree of centralization of production, giving rise to localized power in the energy industry, but coal remained a small source of energy well into the 19^th century.  The concentration of power over energy resources increased with industrialization and the associated expansion of coal production. By 1900, coal had become the main primary energy source with a share of 53 percent. Together with oil (2.0 %), gas (0.6%) and hydro (0.6%), the energy sources with concentrated control accounted for 56 percent of total energy consumption.  The degree of concentration in the production of energy increased with the expansion of fossil fuels in the energy mix. By 1950, fossil fuels accounted for 69 percent of total energy consumption, and this share increases to 72 percent if we add hydroelectric power generation, a centralized renewable energy source.

The centralization of power in the production of the “new” energy sources, i.e. other than traditional fuelwood and fodder, arises from the very nature of the resources: to be produced in the most economical way, they need large capital expenditures. This requirement led to two major developments: the concentration of power in the energy industry (very few producers and, in some cases, nationalization of the resource), and the expansion of the financial system to address the financing needs of large capital projects. This process led to increasing concentration of wealth and political power.     

Ranking of Energy Resources by Cost                

Policies on the decarbonization of the energy supply have focused largely on coal because it has the higher CO2 concentration of any fuel. When the policy objective is the reduction of CO2 emissions, this focus is warranted. As shown in table III-6, in 2021 fossil fuels accounted for 92 percent of CO2 emissions and coal was the top contributor with a share of 42 percent. Moreover, the coal’s share of CO2 emissions was 60 percent higher than its share of the primary energy supply.

Table III-6. CO2 Emissions-intensity of Fossil Fuels in 2021

Share of CO2 Emissions/                    Coal              Oil        Natural Gas

Share of Supply                                   1.6                 1.0            0.9

Source: IEA, Gloabal Energy Review CO2 Emissions in 2021 �" Data; Table in this book

 

When the production and use of energy generates a variety of negative effects, focusing on CO2 emissions may lead to misleading conclusions and misguided policies. In table III-7, I suggest a ranking of primary energy sources based on a more complete evaluation based on the types of negative effects discussed above. In this evaluation, the category “ecological impact” is separated from the CO2 emission category. The latter refers to the effects of energy production/consumption on the climate while the former deals with the environmental impacts and mining (directly in the case of coal and indirectly in the case of renewables). For each fuel, I assigned a value of 0 to 10 to emissions and control because their effects are global and very consequential. To the other two factors I assigned values between 0 and 5 because their effects are weaker and largely localized.  The values for the CO2 emissions are based on table III-6. For the ecological impact, I considered a variety of factors.  The largest ecological impact is assigned to coal, not just for its mining, but its transportation and use because of its bulkiness. The other energy sources are assigned a slightly lower value, but for different reasons. Nuclear power because of the risks associated with a major failure or disaster, as evidenced by a number of cases; oil because of the effects of drilling operations, pipelines, and potential risks of oil spills. Renewables have a relatively high value of ecological effect directly in the case of hydro and indirectly in the case of other renewables (mining of necessary minerals). The lowest value is assigned to natural gas because its effects are largely limited to drilling and pipelines. Renewables other than hydro differ from all other sources because their effects are mainly generated in the consumption phase. The control of energy is largely an issue related to oil because of OPEC. I assigned the top value for concentration of power to the first four energy sources because their characteristics lead to industries with very few large companies. This is true also of hydroelectric power. Although the technology exists for the “democratization” of the energy supply in the case of solar and wind energy, the supply-side focus of current energy policy is leading also to centralization. That’s why I have assigned a high value to renewables. Overall, the most injurious form of primary of energy is oil, followed by coal and natural gas. This means that the focus of decarbonization policies on coal is misplaced and may have serious long-term consequences. While reducing coal consumption is the most effective way to lower CO2 emissions, maintaining current levels of oil consumption has implications for geopolitics and international economic stability that may be as important as climate change effects. According to my rankings, the energy policy priority should be directed at reducing the consumption of oil. If this would retard the decline in coal consumption, as potential shifts to electric cars would require higher levels of electricity generation which may not be met by renewable energy, the environmental effects may be mitigated by stronger restrictions on the operation of coal-burning plants and aggressive CO2-capture measures.              

 

Table III-7. Ranking of Primary Energy Sources with Respect to Costs

 

                               CO2 Emissions      Ecological       Control       Concentration     Total

                         Impact              of Energy   of Power

 

Oil                                  8                       3                      10                   5                     26

Coal                              10                       4                        2                   5                     21

Natural Gas                   6                        2                        4                   5                     17         

Nuclear                          0                        3                        0                   5                      8 

Renewables                    0                       3                        0                   4                      7 

                  

Notes:

¹Andrew Moseman, 18 May 2021, “What Is the Ideal Level of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere for Human Life?”, MIT Climate Portal.

²Piers M. Forster and other 49 contributors (2023), “Indicators of Global Climate Change 22: Annual Update of Large-Scale Indicators of the State of the Climate System and Human Influence,” Earth System Science Data, ARTICLE, Vol. 15, Issue 6, pp. 2295-2327, Table 5.

³Nasa, 14 August 2023, “NASA Clocks July 2023 as the Hottest Month on Record Ever since 1880”.

⁴Jeff Masters, 30 January 2023, “Dozens of Billion-dollar Weather Disasters Hit Earth in 2022,” Yale Climate Connections.

⁵Adam B. Smith (10 January 2023), “22 U.S. Billion-dollar Weather and Climate Disasters in Historical Context,” Climate.Gov.

 

 

References

Vaclav Smil (2010), Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

World Health Organization (2023), “Climate Change.”

Tacuma Watari, Benjamin C. Mclellan, Damien Garcia, Elsa Dominich, Eisi Yamasue, Keisuke Nansai (2019), “Total Material Requirements for the Global Energy Transition to 2050: A Focus on Transport and Electricity,” Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Elsevier, Volume 148 (20 September 2019), pp. 91-103.