Energy Accounting for a Renewable Energy Future

Abstract

For millennia, humans relied almost entirely on renewable energy (RE), largely biomass, for their energy needs. Over the past century, fossil fuels (FFs) have not only largely replaced RE, but have enabled a many-fold rise in total energy use. This FF dominance changed the way we think about and accounted for energy use. If (as at present) the world essentially continues to ignore climate change, eventual resource depletion will force conversion to RE and, perhaps, nuclear energy will once again have to provide most of the world’s energy use. However, the change is more likely to come about because of the urgent need for climate change mitigation. At present, primary RE electricity accounting is done by calculating the FF energy that would be needed to produce it. But as FFs disappear, this approach makes less sense. Instead, a new approach to energy accounting will be needed, one that allows for the intermittent nature of the two most abundant RE sources, wind and solar power. Surplus intermittent RE might be converted to H2, further complicating energy accounting. An additional complication will be the treatment of energy reductions, especially from passive solar energy, likely to be more important in the coming decades. This paper is a review of the evidence to try to determine the best approach to future energy accounting.

Carbon footprinting of universities worldwide: Part I—objective comparison by standardized metrics

“…The availability of a green energy supply, however, is generally a crucial factor. Based on the expected worldwide transition towards increasing renewable energy production in the coming decades [65], carbon footprints of energy provision might need a new way of quantification [66,67]. This is in no way a criticism on certain universities for having a higher CF than others.…”

Dünya, Avrupa Birliği ve Türkiye’nin Enerji Arz, Kurulu Güç ve Yenilenebilir Kapasitelerinin Analizi

“…It has been argued that a figure of 350 ppm for CO2 in the atmosphere is considered as the safe 'planetary boundary' [1]. However, it was reported that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has already passed 407 ppm in 2018 [12]. On the other hand, it is generally acknowledged that the frequency of occurrence of extreme meteorological events have been increasing over the past decades [12].…”

Reducing Co2 Emissions Through Biogas, Wind and Solar Energy Production: Evidence From Indonesia

“…In the same fashion, the measurement unit of all kinds of energy production i.e. biogas energy BE, wind energy WE and solar energy SE have been taken as billion kilowatt hours (Moriarty and Honnery, 2019). Not only these, but the same unit has also been taken for energy consumption EC, the only control variable of the study.…”