Electricity Generation by Source, 2017 -- Top 25 Power-Producing Countries

Who is leading the transition towards a cleaner and safer energy mix?




Data source:
BP. (2018). BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018. London, UK: BP p.l.c.
RTE. (2018). Bilan électrique 2017. Paris, France: Réseau de transport d'électricité (RTE).

Greenhouse Gas Emissions per Capita: Top 20 Countries in 2016

The graph below renders a different picture of how people around the world are warming the Earth by accounting for all Kyoto protocol greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide.



Source: Olivier, J. G. J., Schure, K. M., & Peters, J. A. H. W. (2017). Trends in Global CO₂ and Total Greenhouse Gas Emissions: 2017 Report. The Hague, The Netherlands: Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL; Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency).

State of Deforestation by Country, 1990-2015

Can the deforestation be stopped and then reversed? Reforested areas could be a good source of additional carbon sinks.

Forest Area by Country
Unit: km²

Deforestation Rank	Country	1990	2015	1990–2015	CAGR (’90–’15)
1	Togo	6,850	1,880	-72.55%	-5.04%
2	Nigeria	172,340	69,930	-59.42%	-3.54%
3	Uganda	47,510	20,770	-56.28%	-3.26%
4	Mauritania	4,150	2,245	-45.90%	-2.43%
5	Honduras	81,360	45,920	-43.56%	-2.26%
6	Pakistan	25,270	14,720	-41.75%	-2.14%
7	Niger	19,450	11,420	-41.29%	-2.11%
8	Korea, North	82,010	50,310	-38.65%	-1.94%
9	Sudan	307,273	192,099	-37.48%	-1.86%
10	Zimbabwe	221,640	140,620	-36.55%	-1.80%
11	Nicaragua	45,140	31,140	-31.01%	-1.47%
12	El Salvador	3,770	2,650	-29.71%	-1.40%
13	Mali	66,900	47,150	-29.52%	-1.39%
14	Timor-Leste	9,660	6,860	-28.99%	-1.36%
15	Paraguay	211,570	153,230	-27.57%	-1.28%
16	Chad	67,050	48,750	-27.29%	-1.27%
17	Cambodia	129,440	94,570	-26.94%	-1.25%
18	Myanmar	392,180	290,410	-25.95%	-1.19%
19	Guatemala	47,480	35,400	-25.44%	-1.17%
20	Virgin Islands (U.S.)	236	176	-25.36%	-1.16%
21	Ethiopia	167,350	124,990	-25.31%	-1.16%
22	Benin	57,610	43,110	-25.17%	-1.15%
23	Nepal	48,170	36,360	-24.52%	-1.12%
24	Comoros	490	370	-24.49%	-1.12%
25	Kyrgyzstan	8,360	6,370	-23.80%	-1.08%
26	Indonesia	1,185,450	910,100	-23.23%	-1.05%
27	Somalia	82,820	63,630	-23.17%	-1.05%
28	Cameroon	243,160	188,160	-22.62%	-1.02%
29	Argentina	347,930	271,120	-22.08%	-0.99%
30	Burkina Faso	68,470	53,500	-21.86%	-0.98%
31	Namibia	87,620	69,190	-21.03%	-0.94%
32	Botswana	137,180	108,400	-20.98%	-0.94%
33	Malawi	38,960	31,470	-19.22%	-0.85%
34	Tanzania	559,200	460,600	-17.63%	-0.77%
35	Haiti	1,160	970	-16.38%	-0.71%
36	Equatorial Guinea	18,600	15,680	-15.70%	-0.68%
37	Belize	16,160	13,663	-15.45%	-0.67%
38	Liberia	49,290	41,790	-15.22%	-0.66%
39	Ecuador	146,309	125,479	-14.24%	-0.61%
40	Dominica	500	433	-13.34%	-0.57%
41	Northern Mariana Islands	340	295	-13.24%	-0.57%
42	Bolivia	627,950	547,640	-12.79%	-0.55%
43	Mozambique	433,780	379,400	-12.54%	-0.53%
44	Guinea	72,640	63,640	-12.39%	-0.53%
45	Senegal	93,480	82,730	-11.50%	-0.49%
46	Guinea-Bissau	22,160	19,720	-11.01%	-0.47%
47	Venezuela	520,260	466,830	-10.27%	-0.43%
48	Brazil	5,467,050	4,935,380	-9.72%	-0.41%
49	Sri Lanka	22,840	20,700	-9.37%	-0.39%
50	Colombia	644,170	585,017	-9.18%	-0.38%
51	Madagascar	136,920	124,730	-8.90%	-0.37%
52	Panama	50,400	46,170	-8.39%	-0.35%
53	Brunei	4,130	3,800	-7.99%	-0.33%
54	Zambia	528,000	486,350	-7.89%	-0.33%
55	Portugal	34,360	31,820	-7.39%	-0.31%
56	St. Lucia	218	203	-6.88%	-0.28%
57	Eritrea	16,210	15,100	-6.85%	-0.28%
58	Kenya	47,240	44,130	-6.58%	-0.27%
59	Mauritius	411	386	-6.08%	-0.25%
60	Solomon Islands	23,240	21,850	-5.98%	-0.25%
61	Mexico	697,600	660,400	-5.33%	-0.22%
62	Angola	609,760	578,560	-5.12%	-0.21%
63	Peru	779,210	739,730	-5.07%	-0.21%
64	Congo, Dem. Rep.	1,603,630	1,525,780	-4.85%	-0.20%
65	Antigua and Barbuda	103	98	-4.85%	-0.20%
66	American Samoa	184	175	-4.62%	-0.19%
67	Burundi	2,890	2,760	-4.50%	-0.18%
68	Bangladesh	14,940	14,290	-4.35%	-0.18%
69	Sao Tome and Principe	560	536	-4.29%	-0.18%
70	Kazakhstan	34,220	33,090	-3.30%	-0.13%
	World	41,282,695	39,991,336	-3.13%	-0.13%
71	Australia	1,285,410	1,247,510	-2.95%	-0.12%
72	Korea, South	63,700	61,840	-2.92%	-0.12%
73	Marshall Islands	130	126	-2.77%	-0.11%
74	Jamaica	3,446	3,352	-2.73%	-0.11%
75	Trinidad and Tobago	2,407	2,345	-2.58%	-0.10%
76	British Virgin Islands	37	36	-2.43%	-0.10%
77	Sierra Leone	31,180	30,440	-2.37%	-0.10%
78	Albania	7,888	7,715	-2.19%	-0.09%
79	Central African Republic	225,600	221,700	-1.73%	-0.07%
80	Congo, Rep.	227,260	223,340	-1.72%	-0.07%
81	Bosnia and Herzegovina	22,100	21,850	-1.13%	-0.05%
82	Armenia	3,350	3,320	-0.90%	-0.04%
83	Malaysia	223,760	221,950	-0.81%	-0.03%
84	Guyana	166,600	165,260	-0.80%	-0.03%
85	Suriname	154,300	153,320	-0.64%	-0.03%
86	Canada	3,482,730	3,470,690	-0.35%	-0.01%
87	Luxembourg	870	867	-0.34%	-0.01%
88	Papua New Guinea	336,270	335,590	-0.20%	-0.01%
89	Norway	121,320	121,120	-0.16%	-0.01%
90	Afghanistan	13,500	13,500	0.00%	0.00%
90	Andorra	160	160	0.00%	0.00%
90	Aruba	4	4	0.00%	0.00%
90	Bahamas	5,150	5,150	0.00%	0.00%
90	Barbados	63	63	0.00%	0.00%
90	Bermuda	10	10	0.00%	0.00%
90	Cayman Islands	127	127	0.00%	0.00%
90	Channel Islands	8	8	0.00%	0.00%
90	Djibouti	56	56	0.00%	0.00%
90	Faroe Islands	1	1	0.00%	0.00%
90	Greenland	2	2	0.00%	0.00%
90	Grenada	170	170	0.00%	0.00%
90	Guam	250	250	0.00%	0.00%
90	Isle of Man	35	35	0.00%	0.00%
90	Jordan	975	975	0.00%	0.00%
90	Kiribati	122	122	0.00%	0.00%
90	Libya	2,170	2,170	0.00%	0.00%
90	Maldives	10	10	0.00%	0.00%
90	Malta	4	4	0.00%	0.00%
90	New Caledonia	8,390	8,390	0.00%	0.00%
90	Oman	20	20	0.00%	0.00%
90	Saudi Arabia	9,770	9,770	0.00%	0.00%
90	Seychelles	407	407	0.00%	0.00%
90	Singapore	164	164	0.00%	0.00%
90	South Africa	92,410	92,410	0.00%	0.00%
90	St. Kitts and Nevis	110	110	0.00%	0.00%
90	St. Martin (French part)	10	10	0.00%	0.00%
90	Tonga	90	90	0.00%	0.00%
90	Turkmenistan	41,270	41,270	0.00%	0.00%
90	Turks and Caicos Islands	344	344	0.00%	0.00%
90	Tuvalu	10	10	0.00%	0.00%
90	Vanuatu	4,400	4,400	0.00%	0.00%
90	Yemen	5,490	5,490	0.00%	0.00%
123	Japan	249,500	249,580	0.03%	0.00%
124	Sweden	280,630	280,730	0.04%	0.00%
125	Mongolia	125,360	125,528	0.13%	0.01%
126	Micronesia	640	643	0.42%	0.02%
127	Russia	8,089,500	8,149,305	0.74%	0.03%
128	Slovak Republic	19,220	19,400	0.94%	0.04%
129	Tajikistan	4,080	4,120	0.98%	0.04%
130	West Bank and Gaza	91	92	0.99%	0.04%
131	Germany	113,000	114,190	1.05%	0.04%
132	Estonia	22,060	22,320	1.18%	0.05%
133	Czech Republic	26,290	26,670	1.45%	0.06%
134	Finland	218,750	222,180	1.57%	0.06%
135	Cote d'Ivoire	102,220	104,010	1.75%	0.07%
136	Belgium	6,670	6,834	2.46%	0.10%
137	Austria	37,760	38,690	2.46%	0.10%
138	United States	3,024,500	3,100,950	2.53%	0.10%
139	Georgia	27,520	28,224	2.56%	0.10%
140	Iraq	8,040	8,250	2.61%	0.10%
141	Croatia	18,500	19,220	3.89%	0.15%
142	Ukraine	92,740	96,570	4.13%	0.16%
143	Gabon	220,000	230,000	4.55%	0.18%
144	Lebanon	1,310	1,373	4.81%	0.19%
145	Slovenia	11,880	12,480	5.05%	0.20%
146	New Zealand	96,580	101,520	5.11%	0.20%
147	Uzbekistan	30,450	32,199	5.74%	0.22%
148	Latvia	31,730	33,560	5.77%	0.22%
149	Palau	380	403	6.05%	0.24%
150	Liechtenstein	65	69	6.15%	0.24%
151	Poland	88,810	94,350	6.24%	0.24%
152	Laos	176,449	187,614	6.33%	0.25%
153	Fiji	9,529	10,172	6.75%	0.26%
154	Cyprus	1,611	1,727	7.19%	0.28%
155	Costa Rica	25,640	27,560	7.49%	0.29%
156	Romania	63,710	68,610	7.69%	0.30%
157	St. Vincent and the Grenadines	250	270	8.00%	0.31%
158	Ghana	86,270	93,370	8.23%	0.32%
159	Switzerland	11,510	12,540	8.95%	0.34%
160	Netherlands	3,450	3,760	8.99%	0.34%
161	Macedonia	9,120	9,980	9.43%	0.36%
162	Serbia	24,760	27,200	9.85%	0.38%
163	Bhutan	25,067	27,549	9.90%	0.38%
164	Gambia	4,420	4,880	10.41%	0.40%
165	India	639,390	706,820	10.55%	0.40%
166	Belarus	77,800	86,335	10.97%	0.42%
167	Lithuania	19,450	21,800	12.08%	0.46%
168	Denmark	5,432	6,122	12.70%	0.48%
169	United Kingdom	27,780	31,440	13.17%	0.50%
170	Morocco	49,540	56,320	13.69%	0.51%
171	Hungary	18,010	20,690	14.88%	0.56%
172	Bulgaria	33,270	38,230	14.91%	0.56%
173	Chile	152,630	177,350	16.20%	0.60%
174	Thailand	140,050	163,990	17.09%	0.63%
175	Algeria	16,670	19,560	17.34%	0.64%
176	France	144,360	169,890	17.68%	0.65%
177	Iran	90,761	106,920	17.80%	0.66%
178	Turkey	96,220	117,150	21.75%	0.79%
179	Italy	75,900	92,970	22.49%	0.81%
180	Lesotho	400	490	22.50%	0.82%
181	Philippines	65,550	80,400	22.65%	0.82%
182	Greece	32,990	40,540	22.89%	0.83%
183	Swaziland	4,720	5,860	24.15%	0.87%
184	Israel	1,320	1,650	25.00%	0.90%
185	Moldova	3,190	4,090	28.21%	1.00%
186	Samoa	1,300	1,710	31.54%	1.10%
187	United Arab Emirates	2,450	3,226	31.67%	1.11%
188	Syria	3,720	4,910	31.99%	1.12%
189	Montenegro	6,260	8,270	32.11%	1.12%
190	China	1,571,406	2,083,213	32.57%	1.13%
191	Spain	138,095	184,179	33.37%	1.16%
192	Azerbaijan	8,520	11,394	33.73%	1.17%
193	Rwanda	3,180	4,800	50.94%	1.66%
194	Cuba	20,580	32,000	55.49%	1.78%
195	Cabo Verde	578	899	55.67%	1.79%
196	Vietnam	93,630	147,730	57.78%	1.84%
197	Tunisia	6,430	10,410	61.90%	1.95%
198	Ireland	4,650	7,540	62.15%	1.95%
199	Egypt	440	730	65.91%	2.05%
200	Puerto Rico	2,870	4,960	72.80%	2.21%
201	Dominican Republic	11,050	19,830	79.46%	2.37%
202	Kuwait	35	63	81.16%	2.41%
203	Uruguay	7,978	18,450	131.26%	3.41%
204	Bahrain	2	6	172.73%	4.09%
205	French Polynesia	550	1,550	181.82%	4.23%
206	Iceland	161	492	205.59%	4.57%

Source: World Bank. (2018). World Development Indicators (Last Updated on March 1, 2018). Washington, DC: World Bank.

Cost of Energy Comparison, Including Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE)—2018 Update

I updated the list in a new post for the year of 2019. Please move to the post cited below.

Park, H. (2019). Cost of Energy Comparison, Including Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE)—2019 Update [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://j.mp/LCOE_2019

Per Capita Residential and Industrial Electricity Consumption in G20 Countries, 2000–2015

It is a maintenance update of my previous post.
I've updated the post's two figures with latest data.

Figure 1: Per Capita Residential Electricity Consumption of G20 Countries, 2000–2015



Figure 2: Per Capita Industrial Electricity Consumption of G20 Countries, 2000–2015



Data sources:

(1) Electricity consumption:
International Energy Agency. (2003). Energy Statistics of Non-OECD Countries 2003. Paris, France: IEA Publications.
International Energy Agency. (2008). Energy Statistics of Non-OECD Countries 2008. Paris, France: IEA Publications.
International Energy Agency. (2013). Energy Statistics of Non-OECD Countries 2013. Paris, France: IEA Publications.
International Energy Agency. (2017). Electricity Information 2017. Paris, France: IEA Publications.
International Energy Agency. (2017). World Energy Statistics 2017. Paris, France: IEA Publications.
(2) Population:
World Bank. (2017). World Development Indicators—July 1, 2017. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Due to Accelerating Greenhouse Effect, Oceans Are Recently Losing More Oxygen, with Deeper Water Masses Leaking Even Further

We know global oceans are absorbing 93 % of increased Earth’s heat content due to greenhouse effect, which are caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄). Are those oceans just very generous bottomless sinks of global heat with no side effects? Of course, “NO”. They have been leaking oxygen into the atmosphere, possibly due to the rising water temperature.

The finding comes from a recent paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Historic observations of dissolved oxygen (DO) in the global oceans from 1958 to 2015 quantitatively prove a significantly negative correlation between the DO and ocean heat content (OHC). Yes, our oceans are losing oxygen.

Sounds familiar? But, this study goes further. It shows that deeper water is losing more oxygen than the water at shallower depths. The reason? Deeper ocean is storing more heat. I regret that I cannot show the disturbing graphs here. Check out the paper by clicking the link below.

Reference: Ito, T., Minobe, S., Long, M. C., & Deutsch, C. (2017). Upper Ocean O₂ Trends: 1958–2015. Geophysical Research Letters, (In Press), n/a–n/a. [Full-text at https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL073613]


Figure: Global map of the linear trend of dissolved oxygen at the depth of 100 meters. (Credit: Georgia Tech)

“Protecting 50 % of Earth’s Surface Area”: the CBD’s Equivalent Goal to the UNFCCC’s Target of “Limiting Surface Temperature Rise to 2 Degrees”

Source: Dinerstein et al., 2017

I thought Edward O. Wilson was the first person who called for protecting half of the global terrestrial area in order to avoid catastrophic mass extinctions. Now, however, I learned the “Half-Earth” (Wilson, 2016) or “Nature Needs Half” (Locke, 2013) slogans have a decades-long robust scientific consensus among conservation biologists, dating back to Odum brothers’ 1972 paper. This month, a group of scientists published a comprehensive review paper (Dinerstein et al., 2017) in BioScience along with online thematic maps of 864 ecoregions distributed among the Earth’s 14 terrestrial biomes at http://ecoregions2017.appspot.com/.

For this paper, the authors have updated the famous 2001 ecoregions map. Then they assessed the extent of both protected areas and remaining natural habitat withing each (forested and nonforested) ecoregion. Previously, about 15 % of global land was known to be protected. According to this new analysis, only 12 % of the terrestrial biosphere (13 % of forested biomes and 10 % of nonforested biomes) is protected. So the authors suggest that the global efforts increase the amount of land under formal protection by 8 to 10 % per decade, while the current increase rate is 4 % per decade.

So, I think the Convention on Biological Diversity can set the “Half-Earth” as a tentative global goal that is its equivalent target to the UNFCCC’s goal of limiting global warming under 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial global average surface temperature. Of course, when the IPBES’s global assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services is published in 2019 (2nd quarter), the official global target endorsed by policymakers might become stricter, just as the Paris Agreement called for limiting the temperature increase to “below 1.5 degrees Celsius” above pre-industrial levels, even further than IPCC’s previous recommendation of 2 degrees-warming.

References:

Dinerstein, E., et al. (2017). An Ecoregion-Based Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm. BioScience, 67(6), 534–545. [Full-text at http://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix014]

Locke, H. (2013). Nature Needs Half: A Necessary and Hopeful New Agenda for Protected Areas. Parks, 19(2), 9–18. [Full-text at http://j.mp/Locke2013]

Odum, E. D., & Odum, H. T. (1972). Natural Areas as Necessary Components of Man’s Total Environment. In Transactions of the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (pp. 178–189). Washington, DC: Wildlife Management Institute.

Wilson, E. O. (2016). Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. New York, NY: Liveright.