Electromobility: where does the electricity come from?

New cars are to be emission-free in the EU from 2035. Electric vehicles are considered emission-free in this context. At this point, we don’t even want to discuss whether this is actually the case, given the environmental pollution caused by the very energy-intensive production of the batteries. But sometimes it helps to do a little math if you want to visualize the dimensions of problems. So let’s abstract from the manufacture of the car and focus on its operation. A normal electric car has a consumption of about 20 KWh per 100 kilometers in real life (not on the test …

Man-made greenhouse gases

Man-made greenhouse gases, i.e. those caused by human activities, are primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). The concentration of these gases in the earth’s atmosphere and their greenhouse gas potential determine the contribution to global warming. Methane has a 28-fold and nitrous oxide a 265-fold greenhouse gas potential compared to carbon dioxide. This means that CH4 (N2O) emitted today will warm the climate 28x (265x) more than CO2 over the next 100 years. Even though the greenhouse gas potential of CO2 is the smallest, its contribution to human-caused climate change is the most influential at 76% because …

Weather model calculations point to relief for gas and electricity

Initial model calculations by the ECMWF give reason to hope for a mild and windy winter in Europe. This would be a welcome relief for gas and electricity. Our CAP2 climate expert took a closer look at the calculations and weather maps of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the forecast of general winter weather. According to this, the chances are good that the winter in Europe will be mild, windy and humid. The positive NAO phase indicates a stronger pressure difference than usual between Icelandic low and Azores high. Winds from the west dominate, bringing warmer …

Offset deals for flights do too little for climate protection

Despite Fridays for Future and various flight shame campaigns, the demand for flights this summer is higher than ever before. Nevertheless, some people are not entirely comfortable with the idea of being jointly responsible for additional CO2 emissions by flying.  So it’s not surprising that offset stores are increasingly coming into vogue, supposedly neutralizing the CO2 footprint. In this type of deal, one often buys the right, in the final analysis, to be credited with part of the savings effects of a climate project, which in most cases was realized many years ago. The calculation of the savings to be …

Neither gas nor nuclear power are sustainable!

The classification of nuclear power and gas as a sustainable form of energy by the EU does hurt a bit. How on earth can nuclear power be classified as sustainable in the taxonomy given the existing storage problems (let’s not even talk about accidents)? And where does one get the idea of classifying the burning of gas as sustainable just because it produces fewer emissions per unit of energy than coal? The additional emissions that now occur during the extraction of fracked gas and its conversion to LNG ultimately make this energy source almost as damaging to the climate as …

ETS prevents more electricity from coal from increasing emissions

Exciting round on Markus Lanz yesterday: Luisa Neubauer, Karen Pittel, Yasmine M’Barek and Ralf Stegner lively wrestled over new insights into the topics of climate protection, war in Ukraine and resource dependence on Russia. Without the always excellent differentiating contributions of VWL Professor Karen Pittel of the ifo Institute – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, a lot more would certainly have ended up in the same pot and gotten mixed up. Only one hint, which almost always gets lost, was also missing from her: the European Emissons Trading prevents that a reactivation of coal-fired power plants leads to more emissions in Europe. …