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grows much faster, so we are all getting of general wealth.

richer. At the same time, energy con- It is so easy to think the world is go- References: https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/air-quali- sumption goes ? at and CO2 emissions ing to pot, but compared to the 1970’s ty-national-summary starts to drop. In effect, since 2008 the the important trends have never been https://brandcentral.dnv.com/original/ trends are going where we want them this good! Nobody said it would be gallery/10651/files/original/f5149884- to go. There was a drop during COV- easy, but there is a bright light shining 79ab-4a3e-99f2-10e59e36db79.pdf

ID, but, overall, the trends are steady. at the end of the tunnel.

There is a subtle ? attening of the air improvement curve, but that is prob- ably a temporary effect due to technical limits with regard to fossil fuel com- bustion. Once we electrify everything there will be a second wave of air qual- ity improvements.

At this stage it is unclear if energy consumption will continue to decrease against GDP, but as long as we contin- ue to phase out fossil fuels that is not an immediate concern. (It may an issue once fossil fuels have been phased out, because too much cheap energy turns us all into inef? cient energy hogs).

The really fun part of this graph is that it actually gives us a glimpse into the future. If we continue to convert to zero carbon, there will be less air pollu- tion and there will be less carbon, a win win at no cost to the economy in gen- eral. And the faster we do it, the more everybody bene? ts.

The day after I wrote the ? rst draft of this column, I came across a new

DNV report named “Energy Transition

Outlook, New Power Systems” that supports these trends and, in addition, notes that the cost of energy per capita will actually go down once fossil fu- els have been phased out. This is a big deal, since the cost of energy per capita is one of the most signi? cant indicators

For each column I write, Maritime

Reporter & Enigneering News has agreed to make a small donation to an organization of my choice. For this column I nominate New Jersey

Friends of Clearwater, www.njclear- water.org. A small group of peace- ful environmental warriors that re- members how bad it was in 1970. www.marinelink.com 13

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