2 ms·
> The world is getting off of oil This is true, but also misleading. The fact we're getting off of oil, doesn't mean we're doing it fast enough, or that less o
by aylmao 2y ago
> The world is getting off of oil
This is true, but also misleading. The fact we're getting off of oil, doesn't mean we're doing it fast enough, or that less oil is being consumed today than in the past. At least when measured in TWh of oil consumption per year, we're still up and to the right [1].
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-consumption-by-country?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-consumption-by-countr...
Consumer vehicles are increasingly electrifying, but that shouldn't be used as a metric to assume oil consumption is decreasing. At least 4 reasons why the correlation isn't that strong:
- Consumer vehicles are only a percentage of the transportation sector. A lot of oil is used by the transportation industry. Electric trucks are still not widely available. Electric trains for cargo aren't growing quickly enough. Electric planes and ships are still not viable for transport.
- Electricity can be generated from oil. Assuming that more electric vehicles means less petrol consumption ignores the fact the increased electricity demand could be covered by petrol. What's correct here is to both grow electric vehicle usage, and production with renewables.
- The economy and population keep growing. If half of cars sold are electric, but you're selling twice the number of cars total vs 10 years ago, you're selling the same amount of petrol cars.
- There's plenty of demand for oil not as a source of energy, but as a material (for plastics, asphalt, other chemicals, etc)