Polluting the planet

The power industry creates 37% of all man-made carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.
In environmental terms, reducing this is an absolute priority.

Carbon dioxide in the lower atmosphere has increased from its pre-industrial concentration of 280 parts per million (ppm) to...375 ppm. This is the highest level in the last 500,000 years.
European Environment Agency Impacts of Europe's Climate Change (2004)

The actual amount of CO₂ spewed into the Earth's atmosphere every year in the production of energy is almost too big to conceive. It is estimated at 23 billion tonnes a year; more than 700 tonnes a second!

It would take an immediate reduction in CO₂ emissions of at least 60% to stabilize concentrations in the atmosphere at their present level, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In other words, we have to more than halve carbon emissions just for things to get no worse. It is this reality that puts the power sector so firmly in the spotlight.

Power generation is still relying on the system developed by Charles Edison in 1882, when the first commercial electricity service began in New York City.

While other sectors like telecommunications have moved on, electricity generation remains mired in 19th-century thinking. Large centralized power plants burning fossil fuels, creating pollution and waste and churning CO₂ into the atmosphere, remain the model for most of the world.

The British prime minister, Tony Blair, in a keynote speech on climate change in 2004, said "If we upset the balance of nature, we are in all probability going to suffer a reaction."

Doing nothing takes a huge gamble with the planet's future. The idea that current patterns of energy use are unsustainable is actually neither radical nor new, even if some world leaders have only recently acknowledged it.