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Could you provide some sources? Embodied CO2 & energy is certainly a huge problem, but it seems likely to affect solar & wind as well. Could we really build eno

by aftbit 6y ago

Could you provide some sources? Embodied CO2 & energy is certainly a huge problem, but it seems likely to affect solar & wind as well. Could we really build enough solar and wind at today's level of technology (assuming sufficient economic motivation) without also blowing through our CO2 budget? At this point, it seems likely to me that we are doomed to at least a 1.5°C global temperature rise.

IngoBlechschmid 6y ago
> Could you provide some sources? The figure about the proportion of nuclear power is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption, the figure "140 years" from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium. > Could we really build enough solar and wind at today's level of technology (assuming sufficient economic motivation) without also blowing through our CO2 budget? A back of the envelope calculation suggests that the necessary construction efforts require the emission of a couple of Gt CO2e. For comparison, at the start of 2018 our CO2 budget was 420 Gt (now it's about 320 Gt).