Fossil and Non-Fossil Fuels

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

In my previous post, The Myth Of Replacing Fossil Fuels, I looked at the new BP global use of fossil and non-fossil fuels. In this post, I’ll take a more detailed look at individual countries, and then return to world values. To start with, here’s what I learned along the way.

Figure 1. Population by Country

Given that, let me look at the energy usage by source of the most populous countries. You may recall from my previous post that in many analyses they use what are called “input-equivalent” values for non-fossil fuels. These are the true values multiplied by 2.5 or more. Why use those? I’ll repeat BP’s explanation.

While there are indeed uses for those artificially inflated energy values, what they don’t do is show us just how much energy is actually coming from each source. So let me go through the biggest countries, showing the true energy usage by source. We’ll start with China, although by the very latest figures, India is now the most populous country.

Figure 2 et sequelae. Energy usage by source, year, and country.

China has pledged that its CO2 emissions will peak by 2030 … not seeing it. An oddity is that the 2020 drop in energy usage seen in most countries is delayed in China until the most recent year.

China uses 8% non-fossil energy, most of which is hydroelectric. Solar/wind are 2.8% … not gonna overtake fossil fuels any time soon.

Note that Chinese usage of oil, gas, and coal are all increasing … next, here’s India.

Here, we see the same gas, oil, and coal situation we see in China—they’re all increasing. Note the drop from COVID in 2020. India uses about half the non-fossil and solar/wind energy that China uses.

Next, the US. It is quite different in some regards, and similar in others.

The total energy use in the US plateaued in about 2005. You’d think this would be good news in terms of CO2. But it’s not. It just reflects the fact that due to increasing energy prices in the US from our crazy war on fossil fuels, a lot of energy-intensive industry has moved overseas, mostly to Asia and Mexico.

Note also that we still only use 9% non-fossil energy, and the largest part of that is nuclear. Solar plus wind is a mere 2.4% … and we’ve spent something over a trillion dollars for that pathetic contribution.

Next in population, to my surprise, are Indonesia and Pakistan. Who knew? Here’s Indonesia.

You can see that like China and India, total fossil use is rising. The largest contribution to the rise is from coal. They have less than .1% wind or solar. Their major non-fossil fuel is palm oil, which is blended to make biodiesel.

Then we have Pakistan. Wind and solar are tiny, 0.6% The majority of their non-fossil fuel is hydro, plus a small amount of nuclear energy.

Next in population size is Brazil.

Brazil uses a lot of non-fossil fuel, 29%. But like the other countries, wind and solar is a trivial amount. Brazil does it with biofuel from its ample sugar cane fields, plus hydro. But even with all of that, it still is heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

BP doesn’t have any data for Nigeria, so let me finish off this run with the next most populous country, Bangladesh. It basically runs on fossil fuel.

With those countries as examples of our overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels, let’s take a look at the world.

Figure 3. As in individual country graphs above, but for the entire planet.

Like the largest countries, the world runs on fossil fuels. Non-fossil is only 8%, and globally, solar plus wind is only 2.1 percent.

Breaking this down a bit, here are the global individual usages of oil, gas, and coal.

Figure 4. Usage of energy from oil coal, and gas.

Despite rumors of its demise, coal use is still increasing, as is the use of oil and gas.

Now, when I point this out, people often say something like “But the usage of non-fossil fuels is increasing exponentially! Just wait a few years!”. But the growth hasn’t been truly exponential, it’s better described as quadratic. However, out to the year 2050 the differences are trivial, and the fit to quadratic in the period since 2000 is far better than the exponential fit.

So let’s pretend that the non-fossil use continues to increase at an essentially-exponential (quadratic) rate. It won’t, of course—in the real world such accelerating growth never lasts. But we can pretend, right?

So here’s what accelerating quadratic growth of non-fossil fuels at the current rate looks like.

Figure 5. Quadratic growth of non-fossil fuels, extended to 2050. An exponential best-fit growth ends up with the same value and is only slightly different along the way. However, exponential is a very poor fit for the 2000-2022 period, and as you can see, quadratic acceleration is a very good fit for that period.

Zowie! The non-fossil fuels are going through the roof, and if the growth continues, non-fossil use will have increased greatly by the year 2050. Heck, in that short time from now, it will more than double! What’s not to like?

Well … here’s the projected increasing non-fossil growth compared to projected possible linear growth in fossil fuel use.

Figure 6. As in Figure 5, but including a linear projection of fossil fuel use.

Once again, a sense of proportion greatly improves our understanding of the issues. Even with accelerated growth, either exponential or quadratic, non-fossil fuels are still a long, long way from overtaking fossil fuel use. Heck, that’s true even if fossil use were to go flat tomorrow.

As a result, people saying “Just End Oil” and people fighting against fossil use are hard up against the First Rule of Wingwalking. This rule states:

“Don’t let go of what you’ve got until you get hold of something better.”

And the truth is that right now, despite spending literally trillions of dollars on non-fossil energy, we’re still a long, long way from having something better than fossil fuels.

As a result, any actions we take to make fossil energy more expensive or more difficult to obtain are actively destructive, especially to the poor. The politicians, the alarmist climate scientists, and the pluted bloatocrats don’t care when gas prices go up. But you can bet that single moms working to feed their kids definitely care, and they are already cursing the “Just Stop Oil” folks and their allies just as I am.

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With that as my main message, let’s look at a few other interesting countries. Norway and Iceland are often touted as pathfinders for renewable energy, so here are their graphs. First, Norway.

Norway gets almost half of its energy from non-fossil sources. How? Hydroelectric. It’s worth noting, however, that very little hydro has been added since 1990 or so, and the difference has been made up with gas …

And here’s Iceland.

Iceland, uniquely among countries, has lots of volcanoes with red-hot magma near the surface. This gives it a huge geothermal resource that is easy to access. And that, plus ample hydroelectric energy, means that they get two-thirds of their energy from non-fossil sources without any wind or solar.

The conclusion is simple. All we need to do is provide every country in the world with lots of mountains, plenty of rain, a bunch of volcanoes with shallow magma, and no “greens” blocking the construction of new dams, and we can all run on hydro and geothermal!

Actually, there’s another way to get a high percentage of non-fossil energy. Just make your energy so expensive that you give up on any energy-intensive industries or activities, and meanwhile, pay through the nose for expensive wind energy. Here’s the poster child for that approach.

Let me close with an oddity that shows the intimate connection between energy use and human well-being. You’ve likely watched over the last few years as the Venezuelan socialists destroyed the economy of their country. Here’s the record of Venezuelan energy use.

As I discussed in “The Unsocial Reality Of Socialism“, that pernicious economic lunacy destroys whatever it touches …

In closing, never forget—your life is not short, sickly, cold, and brutal for a simple reason.

Fossil fuels.

My very best regards to everyone,

w.

Yeah, I know, you’ve heard it before: When you comment please quote the exact words you are discussing. I’m tired of people asking me to defend something I never said. Thanks.