From the Robert Bryce Substack
These 9 charts from the Statistical Review Of World Energy expose the myth of the energy transition & show hydrocarbons are growing faster than alt-energy
During his 16-year career in the NBA, Rasheed Wallace was among basketball’s most intimidating power forwards. He was also among the most volatile. Wallace holds the single-season record for technical fouls (41) and ranks third all-time in total technicals with 317.
In addition to his disdain for referees, the 6’11” Wallace, gained fame for a particular catchphrase. If “Sheed” or one of his teammates was called for a foul that he thought was undeserved, and the opposing player missed the ensuing free throw, he would often holler, “Ball don’t lie,” to indicate that the basketball knew the referee had made a bad call.
The ball don’t lie. Neither do the numbers in the latest Statistical Review of World Energy.
Amid the ongoing blizzard of propaganda about the “energy transition” and the tired antics of the goobers from Just Stop Oil — a pair of whom vandalized Stonehenge with orange paint last Wednesday — the Statistical Review, published by the Energy Institute, KPMG, and Kearney, provides a much-needed reality check to the narrative being promoted by major media outlets, academics, and the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex.
The new Statistical Review, released last Thursday, shows, yet again, that despite the hype, subsidies, and mandates, wind and solar energy aren’t keeping pace with the growth in hydrocarbons. Global hydrocarbon use and CO2 emissions hit record highs in 2023, with hydrocarbon consumption up 1.5% to 504 exajoules (EJ). That increase was “driven by coal, up 1.6%, [and] oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels [per day] for the first time.” Global natural gas demand was flat, mainly due to stunning declines in Europe. Gas demand in the U.K. fell by 10%. It also fell by 11% in Spain, 10% in Italy, and 11% in France.
Soaring electricity demand was, yet again, the big story in 2023. Global power generation increased by 2.5% to 29,924 terawatt-hours. About 32% of that juice (9,456 TWh) was generated in China, where electricity production surged by nearly 7%. The U.S. came in a distant second in power generated, with 4,494 TWh. Domestic power production dropped by about 1% last year. Power generation in India also increased by about 7% last year to a record 1,958 TWh, 75% of which came from coal-fired power plants.
I look forward to the release of the Statistical Review every year because the data can be downloaded in Excel. That allows me and others to make meaningful comparisons beyond the spin. Numerical comparisons are essential ingredients in the debate over energy and climate policy. The best advice I ever got on presenting numbers came from author and statistician Edward Tufte. He said: whenever you give people a number, give them a familiar metric so they can make a comparison. That advice changed the course of my career. Here are nine charts from the Statistical Review.
Chart 1
I published this chart last month in “What The Media Won’t Tell You About The Energy Transition.” I’ve updated it with the latest figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the Statistical Review.
Chart 2
Chart 3
Chart 4
This graphic uses the same numbers as the one in the previous slide but has higher resolution because the numbers can be compared more easily. It clearly shows that the reductions in emissions in the West are being swamped by the massive increases in China and India.
Chart 5
The U.S. again led the world in emissions reductions in 2023, but as shown in the previous two slides, those reductions are being swamped by the growth in India and China.
Chart 6
Climate activists can sling all the soup and paint they want, but oil remains the dominant form of energy consumed worldwide. Oil use increased slightly last year in the U.S., up about 0.5%. Meanwhile, consumption soared in China, up almost 11%. It was also up 5% in India and nearly 13% in Vietnam. The results: global demand jumped by about 2.3 million barrels per day, and oil use averaged over 100 million barrels per day for the first time in history.
Chart 7
As I noted last December in “Two Days After COP28, IEA Delivers More Coal Hard Reality,” the International Energy Agency has been predicting a decline in global coal demand for years. I explained that in 2015, the IEA claimed, ‘The golden age of coal in China seems to be over.” That year, the agency predicted global coal demand would fall to 5.5 billion tons by 2020. That didn’t happen. Instead of falling, coal demand keeps powering upward, with major increases in China and India. Other Asian countries, including Vietnam, the Philippines, and Bangladesh, are also burning more coal.
Chart 8
The Inflation Reduction Act provides tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for wind and solar in the U.S. However, as seen below, gas-fired generation is still growing faster than those two sources combined. Note that in 2023, wind generation fell despite the addition of 6 gigawatts of capacity. Why? The wind didn’t blow.
Chart 9
We are carpet bombed with claims that alt-energy — and solar in particular — is cheaper than other forms of electricity production. And yet, in China and India, coal-fired generation continues to grow faster than solar. Maybe they didn’t get the memo.
I will continue pulling numbers from the Statistical Review until June 2025, when the next edition is published. And I will repeat here a line I use in my speaking engagements: These aren’t my numbers. These are the numbers.
And the numbers don’t lie.
Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Podcast on Energy Poverty Is Out
On Friday, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship published the podcast I moderated last year in London with Magatte Wade, Chris Wright, and Scott Tinker. The caption for the conversation: “What is Energy Poverty Actually Like?” Magatte, Chris, and Scott all brought sharp perspectives to the table, and they all emphasized what should be obvious: the world’s poorest people need hydrocarbons, and lots of them, to climb out of poverty. You may watch it by clicking here.
Numbers Don’t Lie.
As we all know, people do lie. Especially people with a cause and a mission to fulfil, no matter what
“”Experts say Starmer can honour pledge to move to net zero and cut bills””
Even households that can afford to turn the radiators on are feeling the pinch – The Guardian.
And yet only yesterday someone calling themselves MrGrimNasty was trying to tell me we’ve had a record warm spring. A Richard Green type epithet seems appropriate here. How can you not believe the observations? Even the media admitted it, but not MrGN!
So, how is the impossible – all green, all cheap energy – going to be made possible?
“”“Family financial security depends on energy security,” he told the launch of his GB Energy plan in May. “The pain and misery of the cost of living crisis was directly caused by the Tories’ failure to make Britain resilient, leaving us at the mercy of fossil fuel markets controlled by dictators like Putin. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
…
“By committing to ensure all our electricity is clean and produced at home, Labour is paving the way for cheaper bills, and the end of our exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices,” says Mike Childs, the head of policy at Friends of the Earth.
Never mind the North sea, never mind all that shale. it’s Putin, got it? It’s all his fault.
My question is how do they lie to themselves? They know it’s utterly bonkers, but then Dave down the road… with a beard…. he’s a woman, don’t you know. He said so.
And they’ll believe that.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/24/labour-uk-clean-energy-superpower-fuel-poverty
I don’t think truth matters much. If the required/desired end result is not forthcoming people bend the truth to fit the narrative. Often that means ‘we have to try harder’ and increase efforts to…That requires a fair amount of cognitive dissonance but that can be achieved by claiming virtue and ‘saving the planet’ is a pretty good sales pitch. The key is of course the impact of Co2 emissions. Even if looks uncertain people can/will chose lowering it substantially to either not make things worse or use a (flawed) form of a precautionary principle to justify forced implementation. Coupled w our original sin of ‘destroying the planet’ that’s still a powerful package.
There are still some low hanging fruit to pick like carbon tax on flights, cutting down on the use of plastic etc but what in the end shifts is short term economics. If people feel it impacting their lives too much they will resist. Like building huge windturbine sites or high power electricity lines close by.
Anyway, with a Labour government taking over in the UK we will see if they will be able to overcome people’s resistance by implementation by force/law. That’s a battleline to watch..
Oil, gas and coal remain the dominant forms of power generation at +80% globally especially in developing countries given license to do so by the Paris Agreement. However, the western democracies share of power consumption from fossil fuels is declining along with their political power base. It is evident the transition to ‘renewables’ is failing badly especially now that the public are aware of the rapidly increasing costs to implement UN inspired NZ policies by governments and to them personally as living expenses for goods and services. This is creating a poverty crisis amongst the less affluent in our systems, and they will not forgive activist administrations for these unnecessary imposts, supposedly to save the planet, but in reality to suit green climate ideology and nothing else.
People don’t vote to impoverish themselves and to degrow their economies and thus starve themselves of the wonders of modern technology for the sake of minutely limiting possible future warming by a fraction of a degree. They have simply been lied to by reactionary governments who don’t understand the science or the implications of radical energy change in our modern society.
‘De-carbonize’ the world the elites say. Ideological elitist irrational lobotomized garbage.
The irony is that China, see Charts 4, 5, and 7, where the biggest “carbon pollution” occurs, is making the most solar panels for sale to CAGW-themed fools. China even utilizes slave labor for constructing components of the solar panels. Never mind, dark money from China is flowing like beer at a frat party.
Bottom line is that it takes more coal to make weather energy extractors than they can offset over their operating life.
The transition is indeed underway. It involves shift coal consumption to China so they can make all the goodies the were astern nations need to extract energy directly from wind and sunlight.
Off cours coal consumption is going up. It has to while ever developed notions install the useless monuments to insanity.
Story Tip.
The rot continues in the UK
Vauxhall owner threatens to close UK car factories | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (wordpress.com)
Well, and please excuse me if you are sensitive to me mentioning this, the whole carbon dioxide emission danger is a downright lie with not one little speck of truth behind its political exposition.
The people who pronounced this scam to be real are all known liars, cheats, charlatans (from the UN down) and have no integrity at all. Just because there are far too many selfish human beings at this moment in time unwilling to lose whatever improvements they believe they have gained locally demonstrates just how deep this bribery and corruption goes.
There is a point when the truth will out and then we will see just what kind of real public spirited activists tend to do then they see a walkover opportunity As long as the numbers tell the truth and are widely quoted back at those who are telling the lies then it is only ever a matter of time.
As Einstein wrote: “Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value. Look around at how people want to get more out of life than they put in. A man of value will give more than he receives. Be creative, but make sure that what you create is not a curse for mankind.”
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels
I see no mention of ‘tradtional biomass’ as the racist alarmists like to call the burning of dung and local habitat in order to live without hydrocarbons. Willis E posted here that it’s three times the global energy than all windmills and solar panels. Is this true?
Well, not if you read the Economist of June 22-28th. The Solar Age is upon us, they assert, all excited on how each year’s solar energy is a multiple of last year’s. “Solar cells will in all likelihood be the biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s“.
Not a word about the use and trends of fossil fuels and their growing use. Not a word about the difficulties of running a grid on pure solar. Their preaching must be seen to be believed. They’re convinced.
Mr Bryce, thank you for the numbers, plus the analysis.
“Numerical comparisons are essential ingredients in the debate over energy and climate policy.
” That is true for those of us who visit this site. This presentation is extremely valuable. However, it isn’t of value to the innumerate true believers.
Also, in all the mention of coal production, I don’t see a distinction between the production of thermal coal and metallurgical coal. Or all the numbers only for thermal coal?
What are the towers with the pinwheels on top made of?
Carbon steel?
Where does the carbon come from?
The figures ARE lying. Or at least you need to know how to interpret them.
In this report and in the earlier reports commissioned by BP, all non fossil fuel generation of electricity has been divided by around 0.4 to give an input equivalent energy value. Thus energy values for hydro and nuclear have been exaggerated by around 2.5, since these forms of energy are used solely to generate electricity. Renewables used for electricity generation are also multiplied by the same. Note that renewables also cover fuel additives for cars etc, and that these uses are not multiplied by 2.5. It’s easy enough to crosscheck this from the electricity generation tables.
It has now been acknowledged that running a coal fired power station on wood chips (think Drax in the UK) is less efficient than it was when using coal. Thermal efficiency is now estimated at around 30 percent, down from 40 percent mark estimated in reports prior to 2022. Even if Drax produced exactly the same electricity as it did in 2021, the input equivalent energy would thus have increased by 27 percent!
Actual fossil fuel energy contribution is closer to 90 percent if real energy values rather than input equivalent values are used.
Figures like these are precisely the ones that the mainstream media are directed by left-leaning governments and environmental organization donors to downplay, suppress or ignore entirely because they poke not merely holes but entire craters in the argument that there’s a big demand for alternate energies on the parts of industries, transportation, agriculture, general power providers and consumers. Good work by WUWT to bring these figures to prominence because it’s a guarantee CNN, the CBC, the BBC, the ABC, the NY Times, Wash. Post, The Guardian, et al certainly won’t.
Just keeping a talley here let’s see. Cost of wind and solar power, which are only providing under 2% of power gen, has cost us 4.7 trillion dollars. What is the electricity cost from regular dispatchable generators for comparison. The calculation should amortize plant capex and opex for 40yrs (assumed life of fossil fuel and nuclear, and 20yrs for wind ) and include these along with fuel costs for total cost per MWhr of power. Include 1.5% decline in output a year for wind power and one decommissioning and replacement of wind and solar. This should tell us an apples and apples cost for out power from these sources
Very nice, CAGW is a lie.
Wouldn’t it be nice if politicians could understand data and graphs?
Charts 4 and 5 show that as long as China continues to increase its CO2 emissions their current rate, any efforts and reducing CO2 emissions in the USA or Europe are completely futile.
China has about four times the population of the USA. But if their emissions increased by 7.89 Gt/yr from 2000 to 2023, this is over 7 times the reduction in the USA, or their increase per capita is 1.75 times our decrease.
Human CO2 emissions for the entire world increased from 25.5 Gt/yr in 2000 to 37.2 Gt/yr in 2022, or an increase of 11.7 Gt/yr. This means that China alone is responsible for 67% of the increase in CO2 emissions of the entire world, even though it represents only 18% of the world’s population.
Any “Paris accord” or other international agreement that doesn’t impose emissions reduction on China isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Self-imposed limits on CO2 emissions in the USA and Europe also limit the possibility of economic development. In the economic competition with China, it would be akin to one European with a hand tied behind his back trying to fight four Chinese men. It’s easy to see who would win.