Moving Ahead In The 21St Century Which Country Will Likely Hold The Largest Monopoly Over The Clean Energy Space

Ryan Carlyle

Its probably not who you think.

To answer this, we have to compare "green" on a levelized scale to remove the effects of nation size and wealth levels. Otherwise places like Chad and the Solomon Islands come up as the greenest, which is clearly more a reflection of having little economic activity rather than being green.

We should also remove outliers like Iceland and Denmark who have tiny populations and unique energy resources. They got dealt a good hand by geography, and cant be emulated.

Given that all developed nations are pretty close to equal on non-monetary scales such as the UNs Human Development Index, I think the best measure of how "green-ly" a country produces a particular quality of life is GDP PER TON CO2 EMISSIONS. That measures how efficient a nation is at generating wealth without harming the environment.

Of developed nations with populations greater than 10 million people, the greenest are:

* FRANCE -- 5928 / TON CO2
* United Kingdom -- 4284 / ton CO2
* Netherlands -- 4023 / ton CO2
* Italy -- 3934 / ton CO2
* Belgium -- 3734 / ton CO2
* Germany -- 3621 / ton CO2
* Spain -- 3502 / ton CO2
* Japan -- 3374 / ton CO2
* Portugal -- 3253 / ton CO2
* Brazil* -- 3090 / ton CO2

You should note that France is nearly twice as green as Germany and has a dominating lead that will take decades for anyone to bridge. FRANCES NUCLEAR REACTOR FLEET HAS ALREADY ALMOST ENTIRELY DECARBONIZED THEIR ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION. If the rest of the developed world followed the French electricity model, global CO2 emissions would drop by about a third. It took bold leadership and vision for France to get to this point. Unfortunately, most countries are now rolling back their nuclear power plans. So I think France will have a monopoly on clean energy for a long, long time.

FRANCES VERY CLEAN ELECTRICITY BY SOURCE (2006):

How did the UK get so high on the list? A lot of it has to do with their service-oriented economy, but the huge recent gains as of the time of that GDP/CO2 data was due to a spike in natural gas consumption. They "were "rapidly replacing coal with natural gas, which is probably the second best option to clean up energy production after nuclear power. If everyone in the world replaced coal with natural gas, global CO2 emissions would drop by about 1/6th.

UKS MODERATELY CLEAN ELECTRICITY BY SOURCE (2010, OUT OF DATE DATA):

Unfortunately, cheap natural gas in the US has led to the US exporting large amounts of coal, meaning global coal prices have dropped, causing a switch back to coal in the UK. So if we had 2013 GDP/CO2 numbers, the UK would come in somewhat lower on the list. [Thanks to Roar Nybo for pointing out newer data for this.]

UK ELECTRICITY BY SOURCE OVER TIME (THROUGH MID-2012)

So the UK was doing really well, but global energy markets are interconnected in complex ways. THE US CLEANING UP ITS ELECTRICITY HAS INDIRECTLY CAUSED THE UK TO GET DIRTIER! Its a disheartening about-face, but the UK is still quite clean on balance.

In comparison to UKs gas and Frances nuclear, Germany simply went whole-hog on the "new renewable" bandwagon without a single thought for the practical implementation. They are now an example of how "not" to be green. Germany is now actually "increasing" its carbon output because of their terribly-mismanaged solar power binge.

GERMANYS SURPRISINGLY-DIRTY ELECTRICITY BY SOURCE:

Note that "Lignite" is code for "more coal" and "Biomass" is code for "firewood" (which is even dirtier than coal in the short term) because the Germans are too embarrassed to be clear about where they get their electricity.

For the sake of comparison, here are a few noteworthy other "greenness" figures:

USA -- 2291 / TON CO2

India -- 579 / ton CO2

Russia -- 632 / ton CO2

China -- 435 / ton CO2

Saudi Arabia -- 935 / ton CO2

If the US continues replacing coal with natural gas (ie by fracking), it will rocket up the greenness charts.

Side note: Of "energy rich" nations meeting the criteria above, the US is fourth behind UK, Brazil, and Canada. Of all "very large" nations (>100 million people), the US is actually the third greenest after Japan and Brazil. And the US still has a huge amount of room to improve. So I would put good odds on the US beating Germany to get into the top five leaders of the global green movement some time this century.

*Some people disagree with the assessment of Brazil as "developed" but I think they deserve a place on the list more than Greece, which was next in line.

List of countries by ratio of GDP to carbon dioxide emissions

Electricity generation

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/...

Ryan Carlyles answer to Should other nations follow Germanys lead on promoting solar power?

http://vmisenergy.com/category/n...

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