Abstract

Do you own lots of things that run on electricity? Now think about all the things for which the electricity use is hidden… Clothes, food, houses (and more) don’t need to be plugged in, but they still need a lot of electricity to be made. Our modern world depends on electricity, so it’s no surprise that we use a lot of energy to create it. Unfortunately, most electricity is still made from fossil fuels, which release tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – heating it, and our planet, up. We wanted to know how many current or future power plants we could run whilst complying with the Paris climate agreement, which set a worldwide goal for limiting greenhouse gases. The answer is tough: at our current rate, we’re already missing our goal! And that doesn’t even include all the power plants planned for the future.