Why should I save energy?
Saving energy that comes from fossil fuels usually means saving greenhouse gas emissions from burning the fossil fuel. It's as simple as that. For example, just over half of electricity in the UK is generated by burning natural gas, or to a lesser extent coal, in a power station*; most cars burn petrol or diesel which is refined from oil. Either we have to move away from burning fossil fuels or we have to find ways of capturing and storing the greenhouse gases emitted by power stations as described in the sample from my book in the opposite panel.
Of course, if you save energy you will also reduce your energy bills. * for an up to date summary of the UK's fuel mix used to generate electricity click here. Here's a link to a non-profit organisation that also gives advice on saving energy in our homes and from getting about. |
"Earlier, .... I wrote “fossil fuels must stay in the ground or at least be used without emitting CO2 to the atmosphere”. The words in bold cover the sole situation where fossil fuels might be used in future without causing damage to the climate. It mainly refers to a technique called Carbon Capture and Storage or CCS for short. In the UK, or anywhere else, it is technically impractical to capture CO2 from the emissions of tens of millions of moving petrol or diesel road vehicles or from the flues of a similar number of domestic gas and oil boilers; there are too many of them. CCS is best suited for use in power stations and large industrial plants. In principle CCS works by capturing carbon dioxide from flue gases, compressing it into a liquid and then pumping it underground into a geological formation where it can remain trapped for hundreds of years or more. In 2014 the CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning power stations around the world was around 13.6 billion tonnes. The IPCC Working Group III reports that in 2010 electricity production was responsible for 34 per cent of global CO2 emissions so a lot is at stake if CCS can be shown to work."
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