Our society has relied on dirty energy sources — including coal, oil, and methane gas — for over 150 years. In that time, they have massively contributed to the overheating of our planet and intensifying extreme weather events.
The good news, however, is that dirty energy is on the way out, albeit more gradually than climate scientists recommend. And according to one recent report, the absolute peak of our dirty energy usage has already happened in 2022, meaning that it could be all downhill from here for dirty energy.
U.K.-based clean energy think tank Ember just released its fourth annual Global Electricity Review, and it has some optimistic predictions about our future energy usage.
"It is the beginning of the end of the fossil age," Małgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, Ember's senior electricity analyst, said in a statement. "A new era of falling fossil emissions means the coal power phase down will happen, and the end of gas power growth is now within sight. Change is coming fast."
According to Ember's report, wind and solar power accounted for 12% of global electricity generation last year. All renewable energy, combined with nuclear, accounted for 39% of the world's electricity generation.
And those numbers are only expected to rise as dirty energy continues to fall.
"The fall will be small in 2023, but it will get bigger every year as wind and solar grow further, which could mean power sector emissions will never peak higher than they did in 2022," the report states.
These predictions seem to concur with a similar report from energy expert Kingsmill Bond, which also said dirty energy had hit its peak and is now set to decline, with renewable energy growing dramatically to meet electricity needs.
The end of dirty energy has been a long time coming — hopefully, now that it is finally on the way out, the change will happen as quickly as the experts predict.
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