Davin News Server

What the Media Won't Tell You About Fossil Fuels And The Green Energy 
Transition 

From reading the left-wing media, you know (or think you know) that there is an 
energy "transition" going on. This is something that must happen as a matter of 
urgent necessity. [emphasis, links added]

Vast government subsidies are being disbursed to ensure its rapid success. 
Fossil fuels are rapidly on the way out, while wind and solar are quickly 
taking over.


For example, you may well have seen the big piece last August in the New York 
Times, headlined: "The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think."

Across the country, a profound shift is taking place ... The nation that burned 
coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the 
planet, as well as historically the most polluting, is rapidly shifting away 
from fossil fuels.

But if you read that piece, or any one of dozens of others from the Times or 
other "mainstream" sources, what you won't find are meaningful statistics on 
the extent to which fossil fuel use is declining, if at all, or the extent to 
which renewables like wind and solar are replacing them.

That's why the Manhattan Contrarian turns instead to dry statistical data to 
try to get the real story.

Several years ago I discovered an annual book of energy data called the 
Statistical Review of World Energy. At the time, the Statistical Review was 
produced by the international oil company BP.

I first covered one of these Reviews in this post from July 2019. A couple of 
years ago BP decided to get out of this business and turned the product over to 
something called the Energy Institute (EI).

EI then produced a Statistical Review in June 2023 (covering 2022), and is out 
now on June 20, 2024, with a Statistical Review covering 2023.

Most of the Statistical Review consists of just spreadsheets of numbers. There 
are some charts, but relatively few. But the takeaways are too obvious to hide.

The big one is this: there is no energy "transition" going on, at least not in 
the sense that "renewables" are actually supplanting fossil fuels.

Yes, there is a considerable amount of "renewable" wind and solar electricity 
generation getting built (with huge government subsidies). But it is not 
replacing fossil fuel generation.

Rather, fossil fuel generation continues to increase, and its share of overall 
energy production has barely budged.

Here is EI's June 20 Press Release, which summarizes the five "key stories" 
that it says emerge from the statistics. The first one is the big one - 
increasing energy consumption led by increased production and consumption of 
fossil fuels:

Record global energy consumption, with coal and oil pushing fossil fuels and 
their emissions to record levels. Global primary energy consumption overall was 
at a record absolute high, up 2% on the previous year to 620 Exajoules (EJ). 
Global fossil fuel consumption reached a record high, up 1.5% to 505 EJ (driven 
by coal up 1.6%, oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels for the first time, 
while gas was flat). As a share of the overall mix they were at 81.5%, 
marginally down from 82% last year.

And of course, "emissions" continue to rise:

Emissions from energy increased by 2%, exceeding 40 gigatonnes of CO2 for the 
first time.

No matter how much the federal government or any state threatens to punish you 
for your sin of fossil fuel use, aggregate global emissions from such use are 
not going to go down within our lifetimes.

The second "key story" relates to the contribution, or lack thereof, of solar 
and wind. Here EI engages in some modest spinning to make things look less bad 
than they are for the solar and wind promoters, but there's not much they can 
do:

Solar and wind push global renewable electricity generation to another record 
level. Renewable generation, excluding hydro, was up 13% to a record high of 
4,748 TWh. This growth was driven almost entirely by wind and solar, and 
accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.

4,748 TWh of renewable generation - wow, that's a lot! Or is it?

Do you notice how they suddenly switched units from Exajoules to Terawatt hours 
when they changed from talking about fossil fuels to solar and wind?

Does anybody around here know the conversion factor? Yes - it's 277.778 TWh per 
EJ. That means that the 4,748 TWh of "almost entirely" solar and wind power 
generated in 2023 came to all of 17.1 EJ, which is just 2.7% of the 620 EJ of 
world primary energy consumption.

Could you have imagined that it could be so little, after decades of over-the-
top promotion and trillions of dollars of subsidies?

And pay attention to that line "wind and solar ... accounted for 74% of all net 
additional electricity generated." Does that somehow sound like a transition is 
happening? It's the opposite.

If wind and solar were truly taking over, they would have to account for 100% 
of additional generation, plus large further amounts to replace fossil fuel 
generators.

As long as wind and solar account for less than all of the additional 
generation, then fossil fuels are continuing to increase, and there is no 
"transition" going on at all.

I mentioned that there were relatively few charts in the Review, but some of 
them are striking. Here is one of my favorites, showing global coal consumption 
from 1965 to 2023:


Global Coal Consumption From 1965 To 2023
Over that period, North America and Europe have cut their consumption almost by 
half, from almost 40 EJ per year to around 20.

But over the same period, the consumption by the rest of the world has gone 
from about 20 EJ to around 140, multiplying by a factor of 7.

And don't be fooled by the apparent leveling off of increases in total 
consumption in the last several years. That reflects continuing decreases in 
North America and Europe, which are more than offset by larger increases in the 
Asia Pacific region.

Robert Bryce at his Substack has many more details from the EI Statistical 
Review, plus several charts that he has created from the EI data. He is much 
better at creating charts than I am. The title of Bryce's article is "Numbers 
Don't Lie."

Bryce also has a figure for the amount of government subsidies that have gone 
to wind and solar generation since 2004: $4.7 trillion. That much money to fund 
a supposed "transition" that isn't occurring at all.

The story is going to be effectively the same every year until finally, the 
promoters give up on the wind/solar scam.

=====

June:

Avalanches Strand Dozens In Chile

Utah's Snowiest Two-Year Period On Record

Canada Hit With Extremes

Swiss Glacier Recovery

Ski Season Delays In S. America After Record Snow

Coldest Start To Winter In Decades For Parts Of Australia

Polar Blast Hits Australian Alps

Montana's Record Lows and Snows

Fresh Snowfall Hits Northwestern Peaks

Cold Records Fall In Montana And Alberta

Frosts Hit The Aussie Tropics

Queensland Freeze Breaks 32-Year Record

Record Cold British Columbia

New Study Identifies Antarctica's Record Winter Cold

More Monster Snowfalls Hit South America

Eastern Aussies Shiver

Unusual Summer Cold And Snow To Sweep America

Feet Of June Snow Hit Fonna, Norway As Europe Turns Blue

Eastern Australia Shivers

Record June Snow In The Alps

Summer In Japan Arrives a Little Late

Europe Chills

It Was A Cold May For Many
Heavy Snow Hits Northeast Iceland
UK Enduring A Historically Cold June
Frosts on June 11
Summer Snow In Northern India
50 Billion Tons Of Snow Has Fallen On Greenland So Far In June
Snowstorm In Himalayas Kills At Least 9
Snow Hits Parts of South Africa For First Time In 40 Years
Scotland Sees Snow
Global Temperature Drop (of COURSE... Hunga Tonga's Water Vapour!)
Warnings Issued In South Africa For "Disruptive Cold And Snow"
Coldest May Lows In 70-Years Hit Wagnerite, Australia
Argentina Abnormally Cold
Almost 7-Feet of June Snow Traps Hikers In German Alps
Snow Set For Scotland
Rare Frost Advisories In Ontario
It's Snowing In Northern India
Spring Freeze "Sharply Reduces" Russia's Wheat Harvest
Summer Skiing In Europe After Record-Breaking Spring Snow
Record Cold Strikes Japan
Frigid Streak At The South Pole
Low Olive Harvest In Greece Due To 'Weather Shifts'
Greenland's Record Ice Gains
Colder-Than-Average May In Europe
South America Freezes
U.S. Ski Industry Reports 5th-Best Season On Record
"Deep, Drifting Snow" Keeps Beartooth Closed
The Suess de Vries Cycle
Spring Anomalies From BC To SoCal
Winter Prolonged In Alaska
Australia's Cold And Snow
Chile's Weather Agency Got It Dead Wrong As South America Freezes
Spring Anomalies From BC To SoCal
Record May Cold Hits South Australia
Latest Snowfall In Decades At Snoqualmie
Frozen Turkey