Micro, Macro and Me

Two years has passed since my last annual update... This year, a lot of my focus has been escalation of the unjustifiable war against Ukraine.  Even if Sweden is not directly involved in the battles of the war, the aggressor has made explicit demands that Sweden (along with Finland, Moldova, Ukraine and several NATO and EU members) shall be subjugated to the aggressor. We are all affected by this war and we must do everything needed to help Ukraine stop the aggressions and make Europe a continent under the rule of law again.  My reaction to the war has focused on four areas: Energy efficiency - This year, I'm not the only one to be obsessed with energy efficiency. I have been reducing my electricity consumption to offload the power grid and to prevent blackouts. More about that below. Supporting refugees - I have re-joined a volunteer group in my area, that is giving support to refugees from Ukraine and other countries. I've also been a team leader in that group. Financial sup...

 After 16 months, our solar plant has generated 18 000 kWh of electricity. I expect the savings to be more than €3 000 for 2022. As I'm obsessed with global heating and avoiding CO2e emissions, I'm interested in how much CO2e we have avoided. Let's dig into the numbers: According to Sungrow - 1 kg CO2e per kWh The Inverter producer (Sungrow) compares the electricity generation with coal-burning electricity. Combining 1 kg Coal gives ~3.7 kg carbon dioxide and gives up to 9 kWh. If the thermic energy is converted to electricity with 33% efficiency, one kWh will generate 1.2 kg CO2e.  That would cancel the emissions from my entire family's personal consumption, if that number would reflect our savings. But it doesn't. Averaging to the Swedish Electricity Mix ~13 g CO2e per kWh Luckily, the electricity production in Sweden is almost coal-free. Most of the electricity is generated from wind and water, and also extracted from nuclear nucular  power. What is the CO2e cos...

It is clear that our consumption leads to irreversible harm to our world. In this blog post I'll estimate the emissions for a person that lives on subsistence. Merriam-Webster defines subsistence as Another definition would be: The lowest standard of living any human being should have. For Sweden, I've found two sources: The Enforcement Agency (Kronofogden) and The National Board for Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen). For simplicity, I'll follow the calculator from Socialstyrelsen that indicates whether one can qualify for subsidence support. The subsistence consists of two parts: Personal expenses for the individual, for example food and clothes. Shared common expenses for the household, for example utility bills and newspapers. I'll calculate the levels for a single adult. Living: The guideline from Socialstyrelsen is one bedroom, one kitchen and one livingroom - roughly 60 square meters. Electricity 1500 kWh per year Monthly Personal Expenses...

I saw one infographic about the biomass of humans in relation to the wild and domesticated mammals. Note that the wild animals (mammals) include both marine mammals and land mammals. I couldn't believe that graph - do we outweigh all the wild lions, monkeys, bears, kangaroos, mice, elephants ... by a factor 9:1? The quoted  article  estimates the biomass in terms of GtC (billions of tonnes of carbon. A human being has roughly 8 kg of carbon (and ~60 kg of other elements) and mankind has a total biomass of 6 GtC, for example. See also the book The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics and Change  (I need to confess, that I haven't read that book). https://xkcd.com/1338/ The total biomass for humans outweigh the wild mammals by a factor 9:1. What does this mean for us? Let's return to the small island that I discussed before , where the land area of the world is divided evenly between all humans. You'll find it slightly smaller but don't worry a...

20 Second Summary: Three out of five of the worlds largest economies (EU, Japan and India) have almost no oil reserves. China are currently importing most of its oil, and USA will need to import most of its oil very soon. The demand of oil is rising and the supply will eventually fall.  I expect price shocks  and shortage of oil and oil-related products. Price shocks for oil will not save the climate - there is enough of oil, natural gas and coal to reach 450 ppm and above.  Peak-oil is a second strong reason to stop wasting our resources and to stop heating our planet. Oil Reserves, Consumption and  Production  Recovery In this post, I will investigate the supply and demand of oil for different regions of the world. I'll start with listing the countries with the biggest  GDP, reserves, production and consumption respectively. GTOE is a billion tonnes of oil equivalents and MTOE is a million of oil equivalent. The five largest  economies ...

For 2019, my New Year's resolution will be to monitor my personal CO2e emissions and meet the 2030 target from IPCC . To reach the 1.5 degree target, the global emissions must be 45% lower, compared with 2010. By 2050, the emissions must be net-zero. Average Footprint The numbers for the average footprint are a bit confusing and some clarification is needed. A person (in Sweden for this example) emitted almost 11 tonnes of CO2e  in 2010. Almost 4,5 tonnes are produced in  Sweden and more than six tonnes abroad. The abroad emissions include imports, such as Brazilian beef, American/Chinese Iphones and holiday travels abroad. Most of the emissions from a person is from his/her personal consumption (7 tonnes 2010), but a fraction is from hospitals, police, schools, care of children and elderly (4 tonnes). I'll use the Swedish web site klimatkontot to calculate my personal emissions. Step 1: Measure Current Footprint. The first step is to understand how much I emitt...

Looking at the world, there are huge areas of valuable land that can provide the human population with food and goods. But we are so many to share the resources (currently 7.5 billion persons). How much land is there per person, if the world would be divided evenly? If you would share a small island with nine other persons, it would be fairly easy to understand how big your share would be. 10% of a 20-hectare island is 2 hectares, 10% of 250 trees is 25 trees, and so on. We can both calculate our share and feel the size of it. For bigger islands and populations, however, it is much harder to estimate our share of the world an the resources. - How many hectares of rain forest would I have if it was to be distributed in a ”fair” manner? How much oil? Phosphor? Plains? Fresh water? Lithium for my next cell phone? Our world has a surfare area of 500 million square kilometers, of which some 150 millions sq km is land. Each of us would have slightly less than two hectares o...