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Expecting global energy consumption to drop 8% in the next 30 years (while also reducing fossil fuel usage to 20% and all of that with carbon capture and underg

Expecting global energy consumption to drop 8% in the next 30 years (while also reducing fossil fuel usage to 20% and all of that with carbon capture and underground storage) is... hilariously unrealistic (or very pessimistic for overall energy usage trends). Here[1]'s a visualization of world energy usage over time. Here[2]'s a sketch I just made to show what the IEA apparently thinks will happen to get to net zero (per your post). Here[3]'s a tweet that looks at the IEA's other renewable energy forecasts over time (spoiler: they were laughably pessimistic, which doesn't instill confidence when they instead make a laughably optimistic forecast)... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption [2] https://imgur.com/a/xvkZSRi https://imgur.com/a/xvkZSRi [3] https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1064529619951513600 https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1064529619951513600

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
It's easily possible because most energy we produce today is wasted as heat when burning it and dumping the carbon into the atmosphere. Since we're going to stop doing that, by electrifying lots of things that currently burn fuel, we can achieve both goals at the same time. The text on top of the graph you cite says this: "Primary energy is calculated based on the 'substitution method' which takes account of the inefficiencies in fossil fuel production by converting non-fossil energy into the energy inputs required if they had the same conversion losses as fossil fuels." It would be clearer to reduce the fossil fuel amounts by that percentage, since we currely don't use that energy, and in fact expend more energy trying to get rid of it as waste heat in many cases. And, note the difference betwene energy and electricity, they say electricity will grow by nearly 3x ("To achieve this, total electricity generation increases over two-and-a-half-times between today and 2050"). You should look up recent graphs of renewable growth, with hydro seperated out, to see that your quick mock-up looks positively sedate by the recent standards of growth. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-renewables?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-renewables?... global renewables including hydro. Solar and Wind are barely noticeable until 2000, when wind, then solar (in 2010) grow from nothing to octuple previous hydro within about a decade: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-solar?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-solar?tab=c... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-wind?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-wind?tab=ch... They have an article about why this is occuring too: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth I didn't choose IEA to demonstrate because they are the only outlier that support my point. My whole claim is that even the boring, cautious industry analysts are saying broadly the same thing. I think their assumptions about carbon capture are silly and more renewables will be built instead, but even their numbers make it clear than nuclear is a sideshow at best.
r00fus 4y ago
8% reduction sounds incredible considering our energy usage patterns, but if you yearly world google energy usage, key areas like coal/petro are actually down over the past 5 years. Correspondingly NatGas and Renewables are up. Conversion efficiency of Solar/EV/battery storage vs. extraction/refining/storage/burning just for transportation is like 10x better. If EVs go with their curve (especially with petrol prices) we can project 80% are EVs on the road by 2040, that'd be a massive improvement in transport alone.
- SECProto 4y ago
  > key areas like coal/petro are actually down over the past 5 years. The source I provided (current to 2019) does show coal down a hair (Peaked at ~45000 TWh in 2013, hovering around 44,000 TWh in 2019), but oil continuing to increase (49700 to 53600 over same period) and natural gas increasing even more (33700 to 39300). Renewables all increasing (solar 356-1793, Wind 1628-3540, even hydro 9765-10,455). The part that I think is unrealistic is dropping the fossil fuels to 20% and simultaneously restricting growth to negative 8%. Increased energy usage is desirable for anyone, so while decreasing renewable cost will certainly encourage wider adoption, I think a more realistic prediction would be at least 20-30% growth over the next 30 years (compared with ~75% growth over the last 30 years, ~20% over the last 10 years alone). Fingers crossed we can do this simultaneously with abandoning current fossil assets.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

It's easily possible because most energy we produce today is wasted as heat when burning it and dumping the carbon into the atmosphere. Since we're going to stop doing that, by electrifying lots of things that currently burn fuel, we can achieve both goals at the same time. The text on top of the graph you cite says this: "Primary energy is calculated based on the 'substitution method' which takes account of the inefficiencies in fossil fuel production by converting non-fossil energy into the energy inputs required if they had the same conversion losses as fossil fuels." It would be clearer to reduce the fossil fuel amounts by that percentage, since we currely don't use that energy, and in fact expend more energy trying to get rid of it as waste heat in many cases. And, note the difference betwene energy and electricity, they say electricity will grow by nearly 3x ("To achieve this, total electricity generation increases over two-and-a-half-times between today and 2050"). You should look up recent graphs of renewable growth, with hydro seperated out, to see that your quick mock-up looks positively sedate by the recent standards of growth. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-renewables?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-renewables?... global renewables including hydro. Solar and Wind are barely noticeable until 2000, when wind, then solar (in 2010) grow from nothing to octuple previous hydro within about a decade: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-solar?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-solar?tab=c... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-wind?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-wind?tab=ch... They have an article about why this is occuring too: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth I didn't choose IEA to demonstrate because they are the only outlier that support my point. My whole claim is that even the boring, cautious industry analysts are saying broadly the same thing. I think their assumptions about carbon capture are silly and more renewables will be built instead, but even their numbers make it clear than nuclear is a sideshow at best.

r00fus 4y ago

8% reduction sounds incredible considering our energy usage patterns, but if you yearly world google energy usage, key areas like coal/petro are actually down over the past 5 years. Correspondingly NatGas and Renewables are up. Conversion efficiency of Solar/EV/battery storage vs. extraction/refining/storage/burning just for transportation is like 10x better. If EVs go with their curve (especially with petrol prices) we can project 80% are EVs on the road by 2040, that'd be a massive improvement in transport alone.

SECProto 4y ago
> key areas like coal/petro are actually down over the past 5 years. The source I provided (current to 2019) does show coal down a hair (Peaked at ~45000 TWh in 2013, hovering around 44,000 TWh in 2019), but oil continuing to increase (49700 to 53600 over same period) and natural gas increasing even more (33700 to 39300). Renewables all increasing (solar 356-1793, Wind 1628-3540, even hydro 9765-10,455). The part that I think is unrealistic is dropping the fossil fuels to 20% and simultaneously restricting growth to negative 8%. Increased energy usage is desirable for anyone, so while decreasing renewable cost will certainly encourage wider adoption, I think a more realistic prediction would be at least 20-30% growth over the next 30 years (compared with ~75% growth over the last 30 years, ~20% over the last 10 years alone). Fingers crossed we can do this simultaneously with abandoning current fossil assets.