The New York Times today summarized the
coal plant building boom in Europe -- 50 plants on the drawing board over the next five years, and the numbers are growing because of rising prices for natural gas (a more carbon-efficient fuel source) and fears over energy security. This from a continent assumed to be leading the green movement make clear that the world is barreling down the path toward global warming. (Our post on
Socolow and Pacala's "wedges" makes this clear.) Warming brings problems stemming from water loss, weather volatility, crop unpredictability and many other issues.
From The Times:
- The fast-expanding developing economies of India and China, where coal remains a major fuel source for more than two billion people, have long been regarded as among the biggest challenges to reducing carbon emissions. But the return now to coal even in eco-conscious Europe is sowing real alarm among environmentalists who warn that it is setting the world on a disastrous trajectory that will make controlling global warming impossible....
- “Building new coal-fired power plants is ill conceived,” said James E. Hansen, a leading climatologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “Given our knowledge about what needs to be done to stabilize climate, this plan is like barging into a war without having a plan for how it should be conducted, even though information is available.
Reminders such as these keep us focused on the major investment themes we highlight under the
Environment subject of this blog, including agri-biotech, solar, tech-driven energy efficiency, water, filtration and other areas. (We'll go so far as to keep an eye on speculative startups such as CO2 Solution (CST), which is trying to develop a form of carbon sequestration. At some point in the future, it will become clear to governments that it will be far cheaper to sequester coal-plant CO2 than to replace existing capacity with alternative energy, above and beyond what's already being installed.)
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