Just 5% of Earth's Power Plants Create 73% of the Energy Sector's Emissions

upstart writes:

5% of Earth's Power Plants Create 73% of the Energy Sector's Emissions:

A group of researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder analyzed 2018 data from 29,000 fossil fuel power plants in 221 countries and located the top emitters in the world.

They mapped plants by their carbon dioxide emissions and identified the top 10 "worst-of-the-worst" power plants, which are clustered around Europe, East Asia, and India.

The world's "super-emitters" have a few qualities in common: They are all coal-powered, they are primarily located in the global north and they all operate inefficiently for the amount of energy they generate. Focusing policy responses on mitigating the handful of the worst offenders would go a long way to curbing the climate crisis, the authors find.

[...] Emissions from electricity generation would fall by 17 to 49 percent if these plants were updated for efficiency, offset by carbon capture, or shut off entirely.

Switching from coal and oil to natural gas would be a start, the authors say. Grant notes that he and his fellow researchers "also embrace renewables," but are also wary that "some countries are not yet ready or willing to adopt that strategy." Though widely cited by the industry as a "bridge fuel," many environmentalists are now ditching the notion that natural gas is a clean alternative to other fossil fuels. Many believe shutting off fossil fuel power plants and switching to renewables is the only way to curb emissions enough to meet the International Panel on Climate Change's 1.5-degree warming restriction recommendation to limit the worst effects of climate change.

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