Image by David Mark from Pixabay
We are a fossil fueled world. Solar & wind power make up just 7.5% 6% of our energy needs.*
The world has set a new record for energy use in the last year. And even though renewables are being installed at the fastest rate they ever have been, it isn’t enough to keep up with the growing demand for energy let alone to “convert” the world to Net Zero.
Overall, despite our best efforts to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the world remains “stuck” getting 82% of its energy from them.
The Energy Institute has released the Statistical Review of World Energy, and it shows global energy use has not only recovered from the pandemic, it is now 3% higher than it was pre-Covid in 2019. The relentless human desire for energy continues. In 2022, humans used 1% more energy than they did the year before and 70% of that growth was from China.
To put the historic size of the “Renewable Energy Transition” into focus, here’s the last century of energy transformation. The Energy Institute did not seem to want to highlight the insignificance of renewable energy, so I created this from the OWID myself.
Greenhouse gas emissions from homo sapiens reached 39.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. An increase of 0.8% in the last year.
Renewables are not keeping up with the growth in demand
Indeed, if we just look at electricity — demand grew 2% around the world last year. Renewable generators grew at a blistering pace. Solar recorded a 25% growth in output. Wind power grew by 13%. But despite that extraordinary (hard to believe) increase, the gap between the supply of renewables and the total demand for electricity grew even larger.
The Energy Institute spun this the best way they could saying:
“Renewables (excluding hydro) met 84% of net electricity demand growth in 2022.”
But think how pitiful this is. Renewables met none of the normal demand at all, and could not even supply all the new demand.
Soberingly, energy use grew in every region of the world except for Europe.
This is a report written by a new team dedicated to “Net Zero” — so we know it’s as rosy as possible, but it’s still devastating.
“The Energy Institute (EI) is the chartered professional membership body for people who work across the world of energy. Our purpose is to create a better energy future for our members and society by accelerating a just global energy transition to net zero.”
REFERENCES
Statistical Review of World Energy, The Energy Institute, (formerly BP), Media Release
* Total renewables is 7.5% of “Primary Energy” but includes biomass, geothermal, and tidal etc (but not hydro). Stripping away the “other renewables” leaves wind + solar at 6.1%. Wind power now (theoretically) makes 3.75% of total global primary energy. Solar makes 2.4%.