The Energy Institute published its annual Statistical Review of World Energy yesterday, releasing the energy figures for 2023. So I thought I’d bring you a brief newsflash with a few headline items from it.
I’m still having internet connectivity problems (one reason why my comments have become sparser here of late), but I wasn’t going to let that stop me getting at the data. So while England were eking out an underwhelming draw with Denmark in the Euros, I cycled to the edge of town, set up a mobile hotspot and downloaded the energy data onto my laptop. I am a normal person, right?
Here are a few tidbits from my hastily constructed preliminary analysis spreadsheet.
Last year:
- Globally, we used more fossil energy and emitted more carbon dioxide from energy use than ever before in history (504.8 exajoules and 35.1 billion tonnes, since you asked)
- Global average per capita energy consumption was higher than ever before in history (77.0 gigajoules per capita)
- Global consumption of renewable energy increased by 5.4 exajoules from the previous year, from 45.2 exajoules in 2022 to 50.6 exajoules in 2023, while global consumption of fossil energy increased more than that over the same period – by 7.4 exajoules from 497.5EJ to 504.8 EJ
- As a proportion of all energy consumption, the share of fossil fuels decreased from 81.9% to 81.5%
- If South and Central America in its entirety was one country, it would be the fifth largest energy consuming country in the world, at 31.28 exajoules – albeit dwarfed by China (170.7 EJ) and the USA (94.3 EJ). If we are to cut out fossil fuel use entirely by 2050, we will need to cut roughly the entire amount of fossil fuels used in South and Central America last year from global energy use in each and every year between now and 2050
- Globally, the proportion of electricity generated from fossil fuels decreased from 60.8% to 60.0%
- Generation of renewable (non-hydro) electricity increased by 24% from the previous year, increasing its share of total electricity generation from 14.4 to 16%
- The main global countries/areas responsible for renewable (non-hydro) electricity generation were China (35.6% of global generation), Europe (18.0%) and the USA (14.7%), comprising nearly 70% of all worldwide renewable generation between them
I’m interested to hear what others make of these figures. My first blush response is that (1) the purported transition out of fossil fuels to low carbon forms of energy has, alas, been delayed for at least another year, (2) the level of change now required before climate change starts to mess with our plans is, to say the least, daunting, and (3) low-carbon renewable electricity generation (and consumption) is mostly the preserve of rich, powerful countries and is not widespread globally. (Note: the figures above refer mostly to primary and not final energy. Despite what renewable transition optimists might say, I believe the primary energy figures are to the point).
Meanwhile, I’ve nearly finished reading Brett Christophers recent book The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet (Verso, 2024) – just shy of 400 pages devoted almost entirely to the economics of renewable electricity generation, transmission and consumption. Suffice to say I’ve learned some things I didn’t know before – including the great importance of understanding the difference between those three things. The book defies easy summary, but it demonstrates (in some detail) that the concepts of cost, price, efficiency, profit and risk are not the same, even though most of us muddle them up a lot of the time. Such muddling is at issue in quite a few of the topics I’ve been involved in debating of late.
In the case of renewable energy, given that renewable electricity generation facilities are so cheap, why isn’t the global energy system switching rapidly to renewables? Because, Christophers shows, the economics of energy (like the economics of everything else in the modern world) isn’t driven by price, but by profit. We, or at least some of us, have built a world based around the difference between the price we get, or at least some of us get, for selling and the price we get for buying – and, for various reasons that I hope to discuss in more detail in another post, this tends to make renewables an unattractive option for people who have the money to finance big energy projects. We urgently need to start building a world which, more like the natural world, is based on cost instead of profit. But, as the saying goes, we are where we are.
This makes the transition to a fossil fuel free world doubly daunting. Not only do we need to swipe out a South & Central American sized slice of fossil energy use each and every year for the next twenty-six years, but in order to do so we need to completely rewrite the basic assumptions of the global economy.
Anyway, as I said I hope to write some more about this shortly. But for now I will end on that cheery note and wish you happy World Localization Day.
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Some people analyse the last year's energy results, and get 'stuck in a snapshot' of that year. But it takes a broader reading to appreciate where renewables have come from, what is happening now, and what the rends are for the future. To get a broader picture we need to also look at Global Demand, the Retiring, the Sneaky Exponential, and the Great Halving.
1. GLOBAL DEMAND
It's not like the global demand for energy is static and any renewables growth we see should be immediately displacing coal. It was not so long ago that new renewables were only a tiny fraction of the new energy being built. Now renewables are the majority – 80%! We live in a poor world where so many people do not have enough energy that we're having trouble meeting the rising demand for new energy, let alone replacing existing energy. But only 50 GW of new coal was built last year, compared to 350 GW new solar (let alone wind!) Over 7 TIMES the new solar was built than new coal. Soon – there will not be any new coal. Solar and wind and batteries keep getting cheaper.
2. The RETIRING
Many older coal plants are due to retire – soon! My home State of NSW has Australia's largest coal plant, and it's due to retire any year now. It won't be long and solar will replace them because…
3. The SNEAKY EXPONENTIAL.
Remember exponential growth is sneaky. For the longest time nothing appears to be happening. EG: When is the Petri dish half full? You are told 2 things – if you drop bacteria in the Petri dish, this bacteria will double every minute. You are also told the dish will be full in an hour. When is the dish half full?
At 59 minutes! That means it’s been on an invisible exponential doubling curve for something like 54 minutes before you even notice it. Then near the end there's a smudge on the side. It's only /16h of the jar, not threatening to fill the jar yet, right? Wrong! Then it's 1/8th the jar, 1/4, 1/2 the half the jar at 59 minutes and at 60 minutes it's full.
Renewables have been invisible for the last 30 years – and now are just appearing on everyone’s radar. Renewables are at about 56 minutes. In just a handful of doublings they’ll have taken over.
Professor Andrew Blakers (recipient of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for engineering – like a Nobel Prize for engineering) says:-
When you get an accurate picture of the doubling curves in renewables, getting stuck in today's snapshot of energy statistics seems to be like a scientist calling the Petri dish race: "Here we are at 55 minutes and there's only a small smudge in the Petri dish. Nothing appears to be happening." Such a call is blind to the exponential and how much work it took to get where it is – and how utterly overwhelming the next few doublings will be.
4. THE GREAT HALVING
Wind and solar are only half the energy story – the other half is "Electrify Everything". Actually it's the other 60% of the story! Why? Because as industry and transport electrify everything, they'll do away with burning stuff like cavemen and losing the majority of the BTU's in coal and oil and gas to waste heat and noise!
Burn oil in a car and you LOSE something like 80% of the energy. Charge and EV and you USE something like 80%! I admit that's an extreme example, but as a general rule, once we Electrify Everything we'll only need 40% of the THERMAL value of the fossil fuels we burn today and still do everything we do! But back to efficiency, grabbing the raw BTU’s in the oil we burn today and claiming “We’ll need an equal amount of wind and solar…” is cooking the books to make it look more hopeless than it really is.
Which is what Chris did here – again – after I explained exactly this issue over on his blog a few times across the last few weeks.
Where do you even explain the goal of Electrifying Everything?
Is this factor not required for academic credibility – let alone your own street cred in the blogosphere?
If anyone wonders how we're going to Electrify Everything – try this 10 minute introduction by Deutsche Welle news. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Data Scientist Hannah Ritchie summarises the paper that shows we only need 40% of the total thermal value of fossil fuels: https://www.sustainabilityb…
And of course, there's the Rocky Mountain Institute: https://rmi.org/the-incredi…
We are Electrifying transport so fast with EV’s that there will be an oil GLUT of about 4 mbd by 2028.
https://www.iea.org/news/gr…
The IEA says the TOTAL Energy Transition – including Electrifying Everything – is happening so fast we'll see peak emissions around 2030ish.
https://www.iea.org/news/gr…
I'll try to keep the comparative price of electricity separate in my mind from the potential profits investors and utilities expect. Since nuclear is the most expensive I'd expect that's what investors would prefer to develop. There's just more potential for profit.