Climate Changes and Fossil Fuel

Table of Contents

List of Figures

1 Preface

2 Climate changes and climate protection

3 Fossil fuel

4 Summary

List of literature

List of Figures

Figure 1: Metric tons of C02/Year 2006 [IEA 2008]

1 Preface

This documentation will be the first of a trilogy in which each part constitutes an independent document leaving the other parts as additional information sources.

Due to the logical development of the themes, however, all of them are interconnected, displaying the reason and history of climate changes, the biofuel and the positive aspect of the climate protection and an outlook on the biofuel in the future. The last part will be a microeconomic discussion if the production of biofuel in Germany is still profitable.

The trilogy will be as described above:

- Climate Changes and Fossil Fuel (this document)
- Renewable Energy and Biofuel (will be issued around February 09)
- Rentability of Biodiesel Plant (will be issued around March 09)

Quality assurance of the literature sources trough Internet and E-Books:

Some literature sources have been retrieved from the Internet home pages. Due to the fact that the quality of the source is difficult to check on the Internet, this is normally not a proper way of getting secured, good quality information. Therefore, all information from the home pages is retrieved from secured well-known providers, such as governmental home pages or officially incorporated or registered societies. The download date of the retrieved information is registered in the list of literature sources.

E-books are to be treated as normal books. Due to the fact that an increasing amount of books is distributed electronically, the quality will be the same as normal hard copy books. Whenever E-books are downloaded, the URL will be listed in the literature index, entailing which sources the documents were downloaded from. I would like to emphasize that E-books should not be seen as Internet home pages but as normal books.

2 Climate changes and climate protection

Due to the development of the industrialisation and the world population, the demand for raw resources and energy has rapidly increased during the last 200 years. Particularly the supply of fossil energy sources strongly increased. The growing global climate problem has correlated to fossil energy carrier in parallel to the increasing standard of living. Firstly, the negative impact on the sulphur and nitric oxide, volatile hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide through air, water and soil and secondly the high emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), originating from the use of fossil energy sources, can contribute to global climate changes [Heinloth 2003].

The first signs of oncoming climate changes, released by the greenhouse effect on our planet are already recognizable. A few examples can be listed as follows: stronger precipitation in the regions of Canada and Northern Europe, sinking rainwater in the regions of Africa, more frequent cyclones, rising sea temperatures, evanescent mountain glaciers and melting ice in the Arctic and Greenland [Petermann 2006]. According to the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change, the annual costs used to cover global climate damages currently are about 200 billion American dollars [Stern 2007].

The majority of the climatologists agree that there is a connection between global climate changes and increasing greenhouse gases in the special CO2 in the atmosphere. Since the beginning of the industrial age in the nineteenth century, the CO2 content has increased in the atmosphere by about 30 percent [Petermann 2006]. According to the international energy agency (IEA), the CO2 emissions have increased worldwide since 1973 from annually 15.7 billion tons up to 28.0 billion tons in 2006. The United States of America (USA) and China have caused approximately 42 percent of the worldwide CO2 emissions (see Figure 1, page 4).

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Figure 1: Metric tons of C02/Year 2006 [IEA 2008]

The industrialized states in Kyoto (Japan) met in 1992 to agree on the reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions, in order to reach a global reduction of the greenhouse gas and thereby counteracting against the threatening climate change. In 1997, the signatories of the climate convention held a conference and decided in an agreement to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of 5 percent until 2012 compared to the year 1990. According to the agreement, Germany has to reduce at least 8 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions until 2013 [UN 1998].

In addition, the member states of the European Union within the scope of the third energy conference in March 2007 have decided to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions towards the emission in 1990 for about at least 20 percent until 2020. The portion of renewable energy in the primary energy consumption should be raised by about 20 percent until 2020 [BR 2007].