Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Energy, Demography, and Climate: Is There an Alternative to Abandoning Fossil Fuels?

  • TECHNICAL SCIENCES
  • Published:
Doklady Physics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Alternative scenarios for the development of world energy, based on low options for the change in the population of the planet, are being explored from the point of view of preventing dangerous global climate change. It has been shown that in order to keep the increase in the average global temperature within safe limits while maintaining the current growth rates of energy consumption and the population of the planet, a radical restructuring of the world energy industry is necessary—the “great energy transition”—with a complete rejection of the use of fossil fuels in the coming decades, which seems impossible given the inertia of development and spread of energy technologies. Using the author’s approaches to forecasting the volume and structure of world energy consumption, alternative scenarios for carbon dioxide emissions have been formed in the implementation of low, but quite realistic trends for demographic dynamics. Based on simulations of models of the global carbon cycle and climate, it is shown that the development of natural demographic processes is able to restrain growth and ensure a further decrease in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, limiting the increase in the average global temperature to a completely safe level of 1.8 degrees compared to the pre-industrial period without large-scale restructuring of the world energy.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 5.
Fig. 6.

Notes

  1. Almost the only exception of this kind is the penultimate report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [5], in which an alternative demographic forecast of the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis was used [6, 7].

  2. Fertility is a key demographic factor, defined as the number of births per woman of reproductive age (15–49 years).

REFERENCES

  1. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, Contribution of Working Group 1 to the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Ed. by T. F. Stocker, D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. M. B. Tignor, S. K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex, and P. M. Midgley (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK, 2013).

    Google Scholar 

  2. V. V. Klimenko, A. V. Klimenko, O. V. Mikushina, and A. G. Tereshin, Therm. Eng. 63, 605 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0040601516090020

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. A. A. Akaev and O. I. Davydova, Herald Russ. Acad. Sci. 90, 588 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331620050111

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. V. V. Klimenko, A. V. Klimenko, A. G. Tereshin, and O. V. Mikushina, Therm. Eng. 69, 149 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0040601522030065

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5°C, An IPCC Special Report (World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, 2018).

    Google Scholar 

  6. World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century, Ed. by W. Lutz, W. P. Butz, and K. C. Samir (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2014).

    Google Scholar 

  7. K. C. Samir and W. Lutz, Global Environ. Change 42, 181 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.06.004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. World Population Prospects as Assessed in 1980 (United Nations, New York, 1981).

  9. T. Buettner, Econ. Stat., Nos. 520–521, 9 (2020). https://doi.org/10.24187/ecostat.2020.520d.2030

  10. S. E. Vollset, E. Goren, C. W. Yuan, J. Cao, A. E. Smith, T. Hsiao, C. Bisignano, G. S. Azhar, E. Castro, J. Chalek, A. J. Dolgert, T. Frank, K. Fukutaki, S. I. Hay, R. Lozano, et al., Lancet 396 (10258), 1285 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. A. A. Akaev and V. A. Sadovnichii, Dokl. Math. 82, 978 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. World Population Prospects 2019, Online ed., Rev. 1 (United Nations, Dep. Econ. Soc. Affairs, Population Div., 2019).

  13. V. V. Klimenko and A. G. Tereshin, Therm. Eng. 57, 1035 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. V. V. Klimenko, O. V. Mikushina, and A. G. Tereshin, Dokl. Phys. 67 (2022, in press).

  15. J. C. Dodson, P. Dérer, P. Cafaro, and F. Götmark, Sci. Total Environ. 748, 141346 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141346

Download references

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work used data from the United Nations Statistical and Demographic Services (UN, https://data.un.org/), British Petroleum (BP, https://www.bp.com), the US Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center (CDIAC, http://cdiac.ornl.gov), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, http://www.ipcc.ch), the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/), and the Centre for Climate Research at the University of East Anglia (CRU, http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature).

Funding

This work was prepared based on the results of studies carried out at the ERI RAS (Russian Science Foundation grant no. 21-79-30013) and NUST MISIS (Russian Science Foundation, grant no. 22-29-00680).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research University MPEI, 111250, Moscow, Russia

    V. V. Klimenko, O. V. Mikushina & A. G. Tereshin

  2. Energy Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 117186, Moscow, Russia

    V. V. Klimenko, O. V. Mikushina & A. G. Tereshin

  3. National Technological Research University MISiS, 119049, Moscow, Russia

    A. V. Klimenko

Authors
  1. V. V. Klimenko
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. A. V. Klimenko
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. O. V. Mikushina
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. A. G. Tereshin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to V. V. Klimenko or A. G. Tereshin.

Additional information

Translated by T. Sokolova

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Klimenko, V.V., Klimenko, A.V., Mikushina, O.V. et al. Energy, Demography, and Climate: Is There an Alternative to Abandoning Fossil Fuels?. Dokl. Phys. 67, 433–438 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1134/S102833582210007X

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S102833582210007X

Keywords:

Search

Navigation