Some Energy System Home Truths

One point of note on the annual calendar of energy events is the release by BP of their Statistical Review of World Energy.  The data, all available to download in Excel format, covers the period up to the end of the previous year (i.e., the current data is to the end of 2013) and as such is about 18 months ahead of the equivalent data from the IEA (which is currently up to 2011 but will be updated later this year).  Just about anything you might want to know on energy supply, energy consumption, CO2 emissions, fossil fuel reserves etc, is there for the interested user.  In recent years BP has updated the tables to include a more comprehensive look at renewable energy as well.

The most recent release by BP was just a couple of weeks ago, so here are a few key energy/climate home truths within it;

• Global CO2 emissions just keep on rising:  this is hardly a surprise, but given the recent burst of capacity from the renewable energy sector, there might be some sign of some leveling off at least. OECD emissions are at least flat now, but non-OECD emissions continue to rise sharply as coal use increases in particular.
• The global CO2 intensity of energy isn’t budging:  this is a bit more surprising given the influx of natural gas into the global economy and the build rate of renewables.  But coal continues to surge and quite some nuclear has been shut down in Japan.
• The annual increase in fossil fuel use far exceeds the increase in renewable energy production.
• Solar and wind are growing rapidly, but the fossil fuel share of global primary energy is high and steady:  both solar and wind are in their early rapid growth phase where double digit annual increases are expected, but as they become material in the energy system at around 1% of global energy production, don’t be surprised to see this start to level off.
• Even in Germany it is taking a while for solar to make a showing.

Some Energy System Home Truths