Global generation of electricity

World power generation is heavily dominated by fossil fuels with the burning of coal being the world’s largest source of electricity. In 2016, the distribution was:

• Coal: 38.4 %
• Natural gas: 23.2 %
• Hydro: 16.3 %
• Nuclear: 10.4 %
• Oil: 3.7 %
• Renewables (other than hydro): 8 %

As a consequence, global consumption of electricity is a major contributor to CO2-emissions and climate change.

Electricity use is in rapid growth

The world's demand for electricity will grow by 85 percent between 2010 and 2040 - this increase is more than today's total use of electricity in the USA, the European Union, China, Russia, Japan, Australia and India.

If nothing changes most of the increased production of electricity will come from burning more coal.

Electricity generation from coal will continue to increase globally until 2026 where it will peak at 10,356 twh.

Coal plants are dirty business

Coal plants...

• are ineffective: Only 35 percent of coal's energy (at the most) is made into electricity in coal-fired power plants. The rest is lost as waste heat.
• are major air polluters: Burning coal is a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, and air toxics. This year, air pollution has caused the loss of $counter(effects-of-air-pollution-on-human-health) years of healthy life worldwide.
• uses up freshwater resources: A typical coal-fired power plant uses massive amounts of water to create steam for turning its turbines. Enough water to support a city of approximately 250,000 people. At the same time, many areas in the world are running out of freshwater.

Positive outlook for world electricity generation

From 2026 to 2050 electricity generation from coal will decline by over 50 %. Wind and solar will make up almost 50% of world electricity generation in 2050.

5000 twh of power will still be generated by burning coal in 2050 though - about 11% of global electricity generation.

Affordable green energy

The change to green energy has been made possible by huge reductions in the cost of renewable power generation. From 2010 to 2019 the following reductions were achieved:

• Solar: Down 85 %
• Wind: Down 49 %
• Batteries: Down 85 %

The sun provides Earth with more than enough energy to completely abandon the polluting and CO2-generating fossil fuels.

As of early 2020, none of the world’s top 20 largest power plants were based on solar or wind power. The six largest are all hydro-plants with the largest having a capacity of 22,500 MW. The largest solar power station has a capacity of 1,850 MW.

Do you put your stereo on standby?

Here is something that might surprise you: over the next 10 years, the power used by products in “standby” could be as high as 10 percent of total electricity use. Stand-by power alone will require 400 medium-sized power plants. Good thing that we have a lot of coal to burn…

Another 10% of the world’s total electricity consumption is being used by the internet,

Subsidies for coal

Even though the energy from the sun could power the world and we have the technology to exploit it, the world still supports fossil fuels with a staggering $372 billion a year. This money needs to be put into the green energy transformation for global climate change goals to have a chance to be met.