By Vijay Jayaraj
For years, sensible voices outside the climate establishment warned that a future free of fossil fuels was physically impossible. As energy sources and as feedstocks, oil, natural gas and coal are the foundation of modern civilization. Hardly any product – whether the fertilizer that makes possible food for billions or the plastics for medical devices, smartphones and thousands of other items – is not dependent on hydrocarbons in some fashion.
Yet, green activists sold the fantasy of a “decarbonized” world as inevitable. Supposedly upon us was peak oil – the point at which the production of probably the planet’s most useful commodity begins a terminal decline.
Operating like a pagan religion, the climate establishment punished dissent, silenced debate and enforced conformity. Governments, corporations and media outlets mindlessly repeated the mantra of “net zero,” neither understanding the objective was impossible to achieve nor foreseeing the damage that would be done in pursuing it. The public has endured relentless sermons, impassioned pleas and terrifying predictions from a powerful cabal of activists, subsidized media platforms and cynical politicians.
Nonetheless, the truth has broken through from the most influential global energy information body, the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA’s latest policy outlook shatters the core pretense of the environmental movement, acknowledging emphatically that demand for oil and natural gas will continue to grow until 2050.
The IEA says that oil demand is not only holding steady but rising – expected to reach 113 million barrels per day by mid-century, roughly 13% higher than 2024 levels. The same report projects that natural gas demand will expand dramatically, especially through liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets, which are forecast to grow from 560 billion cubic meters in 2024 to more than 1,000 billion cubic meters by 2050.
After years of manipulative modeling to validate climate illusions, the agency had to confront hard data that showed rising consumption, growing populations, industrial expansion and the energy needs of AI, cloud computing and electrified transport. These forces mean the need for fossil fuels will remain for decades to come.
The IEA’s new forecast also recognizes a demand surge from the Global South. Countries like India, Nigeria and Indonesia are prioritizing energy access over ideological purity. They are building refineries, coal mines and energy infrastructure to secure their future. Clear-eyed leaders know that raising millions out of generational poverty takes precedence over indulging the lunacy of wealthy elites who profess to lose sleep over a theoretical warming of a couple degrees 100 years in the future.
The massive expansion of AI data centers and electrification efforts – once cited as proof of a “green” revolution – are driving higher demand for fossil fuels. The digital age requires continuous power and the hydrocarbons to provide it.
The death certificate for the “peak oil” delusion has been issued.
Why did the energy establishment get it so wrong? Because physics never cared about political narratives. The laws of nature and economics are immutable. Replacing the proven power of hydrocarbons with politically favored technologies was fundamentally infeasible.
Wind and solar are dreadfully bad on every front – land-intensive, resource-heavy and often unavailable when most needed. Wind, hydrogen and solar are impracticable. Period.
Claims that these technologies are economical are based on metrics that exclude the staggering costs of backup power (usually natural gas plants) for intermittent wind and solar, of new transmission lines and of stabilizing a power grid made unstable by “green” machines.
Fossil fuels, therefore, will remain the backbone of electricity generation, as IEA’s data indicates. Even under optimistic assumptions for the growth of nuclear power, oil and gas are projected to dominate through mid-century.
The number of climate crusaders willing to deny this reality seemingly dwindle with each passing week.
This commentary was first published at CO2 Coalition’s Substack December 17.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
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It occurs to me that one thing feeding climate hysteria is that figure of 113 million barrels of oil a day. I know how big a barrel is (42 gallons and 8 barrels per ton) but it’s still a huge number, and it defies the imagination that we can continue pumping 113 million barrels a day for the next century or two.
So it just seems common sense that it’s going to run out sometime real soon, and if that’s the case, why not replace it now while we’ve still got the chance to do it on our own terms rather than when the wells run dry?
I don’t know how big an effect that is on most people, but it seems more plausible to me than that everyone actually believes a mere couple of degrees increase in temperatures can doom life. There must be something making so many people fearful of the future, and I think running out of oil, even if only a background fear, is more plausible than being warmer.
Imagination is one thing, and reality is another.
Yes.
Some people let their imaginations run away with them.
They should stick to reality.
If that was their genuine fear they would be marching and howling for more nuclear energy, surely.
Humanity has a clear history of innovation. The driver of progress is ever better options for survival, That translates into easier less effort choices. Our needs to find food, make shelter and travel has forced our evolution and driven careful use of resources at hand.
With that in mind, I am confident should the day ever come when oil becomes a scarce product and remains essential for our needs it will be synthesised. Using nuclear energy as the prime power provider will enable ongoing availability of liquid fuels, there is no technical shortage and never has been.
Nuclear technology has barely been touched and will provide an infinite amount of energy provision from known reserves and known technology, even without fusion being achieved, which we all hope will happen at some point.
The Climate Alarm scare stories keeping our children and grandchildren anxious has been the most damaging construct based on false fears at best and malicious intent at worst.
The world needs to listen to real science, engage with real engineers and stop all the nonsense being taught in our over engaged scare mongering education institutes.
Merry Christmas to all and let’s hope the New Year continues to bring peace, democratic freedoms and sanity back to the World.
The more nuclear we have, the longer fossil fuel/feedstocks will last.
Russia just put in service the first LNG carrier that can go through 2 meters of ice on a steady basis, and will carry LNG from West Russian Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. No icebreakers are required, except under extreme conditions.
It is without doubt “common sense” to state that fossil fuels are “going to run out sometime,” as long as you leave out the “real soon.”
Yes, fossil fuels will reach a point “sometime” in the future where their extraction will no longer be economic – the effective point of depletion – but this point is multiple decades away for oil and gas, and probably multiple centuries away for coal.
So, yes again, we need to be very serious about researching viable non-intermittent dispatchable alternatives, accepting that THAT alternative will NOT be wind and solar generation, which IS intermittent, unreliable, asynchronous, without inertia, fantastically expensive, laughably inefficient, and non-dispatchable.
But apart from THAT, it must also be accepted that the “save-all” wind and solar route has been an incredibly stupid concept that has not even been subject to basic scoping-level feasibility studies, these certainly having NOT been insisted upon by generally scientific and engineering illiterate politicians in the west . . . who would not even understand what a bloody scoping study means.
For example, there are two metals and one mineral (there are more!) this idiotic Net Zero by 2050 concept CANNOT do without – copper, nickel, and graphite:
Current global copper production is 25 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa);
Global copper Reserves are 880 million tonnes (Mt);
And to build the wind turbines, solar panels, increase grid sizes by 3-fold, build the batteries for EVs, and the massive batteries for 28 days of power buffer storage for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, 6 BILLION tonnes (Bt) of copper must be produced between now and 2050.
Even if the Reserves were there – they’re not – to produce that amount of copper at current rates of production would take . . . 240 years!
Or, if the Reserves were there, the rate of global annual copper production would have to be increased this minute-overnight-by tomorrow morning from 25Mtpa to 240Mtpa!!
But if this was possible – IT’S NOT – current global Reserves would be depleted . . . in less than 4 years!!
And nickel’s worse. Current global production is 2.35Mtpa; Reserves are 95Mt; and, if the Reserves were there – THEY’RE NOT – to produce the 1.25Bt of nickel required by 2050 at current rates of production would take . . . 530 years!!
And graphite is worse again. Current global production is 2.73Mtpa; Reserves are 320Mt; and, if the Reserves were there – THEY’RE NOT! – to produce the 11.46Bt of graphite required by 2050 at current rates of production would take . . . 4,200 years!!!
Apart from the obvious insanity of the concept so starkly demonstrated by the figures above, here’s some mining engineering reality, necessary to forestall the inevitably idiotic suggestion of stupid politicians of “just build more mines”:
From Resource (mineralised deposit) discovery – which takes years of prior painstaking geological exploration work in itself – to operating producing mine is, AT BEST, a 15 year exercise.
So, notwithstanding wind and solar generation’s intermittency, unreliability, asynchronicity, lack of inertia, fantastic expense, pathetic efficiency, and non-dispatchability . . . it ain’t going to happen anyway!!
A great collection of sobering date, Colin.
Just think of all the materials that have been wasted in the last 40 years building out wind, solar and batteries and extra grid cost to connect all that bull shit.
All of it will be useless eyesores in 20 or so years!
Why force it? Let it happen organically and at the prompting of the market. It will not be a sudden event but like so much in the world it will be gradual at various scales and as always we will come out ahead.
Start by taking away all subsidies and throw out wind/solar preference rules and regulations to achieve organic sanity
Sit down in the mud and starve. The rest of us will continue forward and never remember you even existed.
hundreds of years of oil, coal and natural gas reserves with today’s technology- advances in tech push that out further – modular nuclear will replace fossil fuels for electricity before the end of this century- so nothing to worry about- Merry Christmas
There are 1.5 to 1.7 trillion barrels of “proven” oil reserves on this planet according go Google AI.
So I might not live long enough to see if your prediction is true.
Estimates are that the known, extractable oil reserves will last 50 years. Again per Google AI.
There are massive quantities of oil reserves that are currently not economically extractable.
There are other massive potential oil reserves, in the Arctic and under the northern seas.
The points? (1) Technology will continue to advance. (2) Discovery will continue. (3) There is no crisis.
In addition, there is synthetic oil, oil made from coal, oil made from processing organics (e.g., chicken guts).
The sometime real soon is not expected. Yes, we need technology to advance to replace it, but not today or tomorrow.
Why is it that oil reserves (oil that can be recovered with available technology) are shown to be always increasing?
In the 1960s they had a plan to replace fossil fuels, but the environmentalists thought it was unholy. Their religion required energy sources that were giant albatrosses that darkened the landscape and scraped tiny amounts of energy from diffuse sources, causing the public to pay dearly for every increment of mechanical non-human toiling work. Maybe they really wanted the return to human slavery, one way or another- but they jaded the uneducated public against compact, powerful nuclear plants and the replacement for fossil fuels was tossed aside. Yeah, we should plan ahead, but religious zealots get in the way.
Only thing I am concerned about is governments doing things that adversely affect human and society’s existence.
Left-wing governments seem to be particularly good at doing that, either intentionally, or by taking up idiotic virtue-seeking ideologies.
Vote for Socialist, leftist Democrats and you will be much worse off later, as basket case Europe has found out.
Maybe that’s because people are idiots. As a finite resource runs out, what happens to the price? It goes up. If and when oil is $500 per barrel, we will need a lot less of it.
Username will deny the reality of the situation.
The future will tell.
Trump officials pressure world’s top energy agency to drop climate mission
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-official-pressure-international-energy-agency-drop-climate-mission/
And the IEA was always in favour of renewables in the past. Just look at this chart. Such agenda, much wow.
Game over.
Thanks for the link. It is remarkable that a guy like Fatih Birol, who ignores the wealth of data which debunks the climate scare, nevertheless likes to say, “Data always wins.“
Hey, Dr. Birol, when will data like this start winning the struggle to influence your opinions?
As CO2 levels have risen, sea-level rise has not significantly accelerated:
Hurricanes have not worsened at all:
Tornadoes have decreased:
Crop yields are soaring, just as Nobel-winning pioneer climatologist Svante Arrhenius predicted, over a century ago:
Elevated CO2 is “greening” the world! The environmental benefits are so dramatic that NASA measures them from space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOwHT8yS1XIRT
For the first time in human history, catastrophic drought-triggered famines are fading from living memory:
There’s some reason to expect a minor increase in flooding, due to water cycle acceleration, but the effect is so slight that it is not detectable in the statistics, as even the IPCC’s AR6 report admits:
Droughts have not worsened, and drought IMPACTS have been greatly LESSENED by rising CO2 levels, because elevated CO2 helps plants use water more efficiently, through reduced stomatal conductance.
Global warming saves lives:
The CO2 Coalition website has great resources to learn about this topic:
https://co2coalition.org/
To understand a contentious and highly politicized topic like climate change requires balanced information. I’m here to help:
https://sealevel.info/learnmore.html?0=dummies
That’s a resource list with:
● accurate introductory climatology information
● in-depth science from BOTH skeptics & alarmists
● links to balanced debates between experts on BOTH sides
● information about climate impacts
● links to best blogs on BOTH sides of the issue
You have nothing but lies, and they are not even entertaining.
Year old news.
These aren’t the droids we are looking for. Move along. Move along.
I have not seen the backup data so I cannot independently verify if those are nameplate capacities or deliverable capacities. The difference is more than 5 to 1.
World energy derived from solar and wind is a pittance….
I always like to see who is writing these silly little article
Karl Mathiesen: an ex zookeeper from Tasmania.. Journalist, ZERO science or stem education.
Shall I continue 😉
Getting the IEA out of the climate propaganda game, and back to what they were formed to do.. Great Idea.
“Decarbonisation”, at the whims of climate propaganda, is one of the stupidest ideas ever thought up, even by the far-left anti-humanists, and needs to be flushed round the “S” bend forthwith.
I thought decarbonization was accomplished by the addition of scrubbers on smokestacks.
“Why did the energy establishment get it so wrong? Because physics never cared about political narratives.”. Correct.
“The death certificate for the “peak oil” delusion has been issued.”. Oil may be amazingly plentiful, but it’s a finite resource therefore there has to be a peak, the only issue is when. Make sure you’ve got the physics right for that one!
The current predictions are about peak demand, not peak supply. The predicted oil glut for next year is supporting that theory. Consumption is slowing down and even the new IEA report couldn’t hide that China has hit peak demand.
The question is how fast the decline will be, because the chemical industry won’t offset all losses from the transport sector.
The extent of your delusion is staggering, I’m afraid, and frankly . . . idiotic.
If you read my post above, this may give you pause to consider, notwithstanding there are 1.4 BILLION ICEVs worldwide that supposedly MUST be replaced. Yeah, right.
And then there’s this – which I believe will also assist in you reaching a semblance of reality:
In 2023, China produced 4.6 BILLION tonnes of coal from domestic mining operations and imported a further 475 million tonnes;
And in 2024, China produced 4.8 BILLION tonnes of coal and imported 543 million tonnes.
Coupled with this, China’s coal-fired installed generating capacity stands at 1,150GW and they have 243GW permitted and under construction with a further 150GW at the planning stage.
So that strange and blind irrational insistence of yours either means you are a terrified catastrophist – hence the irrationality – or you have skin in the “renewable” game, which perhaps prompts additional terror when considering the losses you face, particularly when molten salt reactors come on line . . . which will result in the instant death of the “renewable” industry, of course.
Those are BIG numbers. Maybe username would get it if you put them in terms of Olympic Swimming Pools.
The world is powered mainly by fossil fuels, even in China, which produces the vast majority of the world’s solar panels.
China is bringing on line an average of about two new coal-fired power plants per week. Coal is by far the largest (and fastest-growing) energy source in China. Oil is #2. Natural gas is #3. Hydro is #4. Look at the graph:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-sub-energy-source?country=~CHN
Thanks Dave.. beat me to it !
Facts, based on actual DATA.. mean nothing to Luser.
He relies on the ignorance of low-end climate activist junk-science reporters.
Global oil demand continues to grow rapidly because of emerging economies.
China “may” peak around 2030.. perhaps.. (they predict) … 😉
Wrong. With the collapse of the Climate Industrial Complex, demand for all fossil fuels, including oil will only continue upwards. Oil gluts are nothing new. They come and go, and cheap oil helps everyone, including you Climate Caterwaulers.
And yet more lies that are not even entertaining. It’s all you got.
You need to be more specific – as usual. All these generalities show nothing.
Here is another general forecast: the move to EV’s may happen. Modern governments have the power to make it happen. In democratic countries the political class can diverge from the views and priorities of their citizens for surprisingly long periods.
What they cannot do is make wind and solar work to supply the power to the EVs. The result of moving everyone to EVs and heat pumps in the UK will be to at least double the demand for electricity. The only way to supply it will be by gas generation. So demand for gas will rise, not fall.
Notice incidentally that this is especially the case for home heating. Burn your gas in a modern boiler and you get 90%+ efficiency. Use it to generate electricity in a plant, then ship the electricity to the point of use, then have more losses…. Demand will rise, not fall.
Similarly with autos. Hybrids will take over from pure EVs because there will not be enough generating capacity to make pure EVs possible at enough scale. And if there were enough, it will be gas powered. And people will buy plug in hybrids, and then not charge them, as they do now.
Demand is not going to fall, its going to rise, and the current best efforts of governments to get to net zero will play a key part in increasing that demand.
Intermittency. That’s the elephant in the room that the activists will never talk about.
Funny that in WWII, Germany basically powered it’s armed forces with synthetic oil.
Why are you using a computer to post?
Why are you using electricity produced by hydrocarbons to connect?
Why are you using internet server hubs to route your nonsense?
I submit you are a CO2 emitter.
“Yet, green activists sold the fantasy of a “decarbonized” world as inevitable.”
AI tells us …
Innumeracy is a lack of ability to understand and work with numbers, especially in everyday calculations and reasoning. It’s essentially the numerical counterpart to illiteracy.
Innumeracy affects:
This is why climate caterwaulers’ favorite units are [Olympic Swimming Pools]. Numbers don’t work for their intended audience.
Pretend for a moment that we had only a year of fossil fuels left. What would we switch too, particularly for large vehicles? We can create our own synthetic fuels, but it requires a LOT of power. Where can we get it from? The only answer that could have a chance to meet the need would be nuclear power. Interestingly, this is the only answer to the problem facing us now with the energy demand from data centers, especially if we keep trying to transition to electric vehicles at the same time.
dwindling and bankrupt- yahoo
Since wind turbines and solar panels ONLY generate electricity, in less than 2-minutes, this video, “Can You Go a Day Without Fossil Fuels?” shows some of the products that wind turbines and solar panels CANNOT make for our materialistic society.
Before we rid the planet of fossil fuel usage, the public deserves to know the zero-emission ideologists’ plan for what the replacement will be for that black tar commonly referred to as crude oil, to maintain the supply chain of the more than 6,000 products demanded by the 8 billion people on this planet.
Not sure how to repave the roads without oil sludge.
It took 20-25 years for them to break ranks. That should be enough information about them and their theology.
In other news, Flat-Earthers finally admit the Earth is an oblate spheroid. It’s a Christmas miracle.
Very nice Vijay.
“Why did the energy establishment get it so wrong?”
The energy establishment didn’t get it wrong. It is the strong arm of government that is responsible for this stinking mess. Without the power of government non of these climate alarmists would amount to anything. This does not mean that greedy, dishonest energy producers aren’t responsible for shamelessly holding their hands out to Uncle Sam for every nickel they could get even if it did hurt the rest of us. They knew it would be the tax payer and the rate payer who would pick up the tab. They are lucky I can’t pronounce judgement on them. There are porta potties all over America that need cleaning and fixing up.
“Why did the energy establishment get it so wrong?”
They didn’t get it wrong. It was their goal all along. They know it’s impossible. But if they can force it, The global population will be dramatically reduced. That’s what they want.