NASA: Alaska Shows No Signs of Rising Arctic Methane

[GliderGuider]

14. No doubt wind and solar are making some inroads in Europe.

Europe's total primary energy consumption in 2011 was about 2.2 TW (1620 MTOE at 12 million MWh per MTOE, divided by 8760 for converting TWh to TW).

Electrical generation provided ~350 GW (3,000,000 GWh / 8760). According to their numbers, renewable energy, including wood which represents half of that energy, supplied 85 GW (750,000 GWh, / 8760).

350 GW of electricity represents 16% of Europe's primary energy consumption, and the renewable portion represents 4% of primary energy. Boosting the proportion of electricity from renewables by 5% would give it an additional 0.8% share of the primary energy total. That's not enough of a change to have contributed much to the 8% drop in CO2 emissions since 2005.

Since Europe's constant-dollar GDP has been static since 2006, the majority of the drop appears to have come from a shift in the GDP makeup. Europe's Gross Fixed Capital Formation has fallen by 11% since then, mirroring the decline in the CO2 intensity of their GDP. This means that more of their GDP is coming from services like finance...

Gross fixed capital formation includes land improvements; plant, machinery, and equipment purchases; and the construction of roads, railways, and the like, including schools, offices, hospitals, private residential dwellings, and commercial and industrial buildings.

All GDP-related data was sourced from the World Bank.