In a March 4 article, writer Michael Burnham of E&E News PM (subscription required) talks about the slow down in “clean energy” investments and what this might mean for reducing the carbon peak:
Investments in new wind farms and other “clean” energy projects are slowing with the crumbling global economy, and that could make climate change’s bite harder in the decades ahead, financial analysts warned today.
…With coal-fired power plants, steel mills and cement kilns producing less, greenhouse gas emissions are falling in the short term, the London-based market analytics firm New Energy Finance says in a report today. But flat investment in lower-emission alternatives in the next two or three years — presumably the time it takes for economies to rebound — could push what the analysts dub “peak carbon” back by more than a decade.
The top agenda item for many climate activists (James Hansen, for example) is stopping the construction of new coal-fired power plants. Coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel, and the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new coal plants at various planning stages could swamp by as much as 5 to 1 all the emissions reductions the European Union, Russia, and Japan might achieve under the Kyoto Protocol. Either climate activists kill coal, or coal will bury Kyoto.…