Despite rhetoric, more fossil-burning power plants are being built than ever before

[unhappycamper]

http://www.adn.com/article/20140905/despite-rhetoric-more-fossil-burning-power-plants-are-being-built-ever

Despite rhetoric, more fossil-burning power plants are being built than ever before
Irene Quaile, Deutsche Welle
September 5, 2014

Fossil fuel power plants are still on the increase -- and committed carbon emissions are rising fast.

At first glance you might respond to that with “so what’s new?” Well, a study is new, which indicates that in spite of all the political rhetoric in a lot of places about switching to renewable energies and moving away from fossil fuels, we are building more fossil fuel power plants than ever before. Unsurprisingly, that is leading to an increase of carbon dioxide emissions, which is bad news for plans to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). It is extremely bad news for those of concerned about the cryosphere and the increasing melt rates of Greenland and parts of Antarctica. The main problem, the authors tell us, is that we have already committed to huge emissions by investing in polluting technologies.

Steven Davis of the University of California-Irvine and Robert Socolow of Princeton University report in the journal Environmental Research Letters that existing power plants will emit 300 billion tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during their lifetimes. In this century alone, emissions from these plants have grown by 4 percent per year.

The two scientists have already reported on the increasing costs of delay in phasing out fossil fuel sources of energy, notes Tim Radford of the Climate News Network.Their latest research looks at the steady future accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from power stations.

--