What are the world’s power plants doing about Climate Change?

What are the power plants doing about climate change and global warming?

The world’s power plants emit a third of the total CO2 emitted by human activities – about 12 billion tons per annum.

China’s power plants emit a massive 2.7 billion tons per annum. Power plants in the US alone emit about 1.8 billion tons of CO2 (about 35% of their total emissions of about 5.2 billion tons – 2016 data). Power plants from Russia emit 0.7 billion and from India about 0.6 billion tons of CO2. The other countries in the top 10 CO2 emitters are: Japan, Germany, Australia, South Africa, UK and South Korea.

12 billion tons per annum is a massive amount of CO2. It is hence of significant interest to know how power plants are trying to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted.

To a large extent, they are trying to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted through:

• Generate less of CO2 – Generating less CO2 for the same amount of electricity generated requires one of both of the following:
  • Use fuel that emits less CO2 per unit of electricity – Many power plants are shifting away from coal and starting to use natural gas, which has much less CO2 emissions per kWh of electricity.
  • Make operations more efficient – Another avenue through which power plants can reduce the CO2 emitted is by increasing the efficiency of power generation. Thus, for the same amount of fuel used, the power plant generates a higher amount of electricity. Put another way, the power plant uses less fuel for the same amount of electricity used, and thus emits less CO2.
• Capture and store the CO2 emitted from their existing operations
  • Capturing the CO2 emitted by fossil fuel combustion for power generation is a recent trend. These efforts are quite nascent currently, but have the potential to significantly reduce the amount of CO2 emitted by power plants into the atmosphere. A host of storage solutions are being explored for the CO2 thus captured.

As of 2023, while the former avenue (emit less CO2 per unit of power generated) has gained a good amount of traction, the CO2 capture and storage efforts are in their very initial stages. One can expect the power plants to make significant efforts on both avenues in the near and medium term.