The International Energy Agency, which does seem to have become the International Anti-Energy Agency recently, has the good grace to admit that zealotry had overwhelmed judgement. Well, they didn’t put it that way. But Scientific American, which seems to have become Political American recently, concedes that “The International Energy Agency predicts global demand for oil and gas will rise well beyond 2030, marking a sharp departure from the agency’s previous forecasts that demand for oil would peak by 2030.” And here we were right in the middle of a glittering green energy transition. What happened? Um uh we made it all up. No wait, it was…
It was a combination of stubborn reality and flaccid political will, apparently:
“In a new report, the IEA says low gas prices, growing concerns over energy security and a global lack of ambitious climate policies will delay the peak of the fossil fuel era until at least 2050.”
At least, you say. And yes, people have been predicting peak oil since at least 1919 so we suppose they might as well go on saying it and they’ll eventually be right. (Unlike those who keep predicting the end of Arctic ice and moving the target, who will never be.) Sooner or later some new technology really will replace it. Not because a bunch of zealots chanted “Wind mill! Wind mill! Wind mill!” but because buyers really wanted it at the market price.
Thus when Sabine Hossenfelder commented “Breaking: Peak Oil has been postponed again” engineering professor Henry Schriemer added:
“And demand will continue to increase until either substitution costs vanish or the oil does.”
Aye. There’s the rub.
David Blackmon was half-right in writing:
“In a shift which likely has much to do with pressure from the United States and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the base modeling scenario in the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook for 2025 (WEO) eliminates a controversial projection for peak oil demand coming no later than 2030. In a surprise, IEA’s revised forecast of global demand rising through 2050 brings it right in line with similar projections made by OPEC and ExxonMobil.”
But while we agree with the latter, we doubt that political pressure was a big deal. We think it was far more important that the IEA, whose brand is very heavily built around boring, stolid, technocratic credibility, had been captured from within by wild-eyed activists who were making it look stupid. And note, as so tediously often here, that what happened was a matter of one model that gave them a result they once wanted being replaced by another model that gives them a result they now want. It’s all make-believe.
Speaking of credibility vanishing like a fatuous peak-oil prediction, the Scientific Communism piece had nothing to do with science, a field that might have involved, say, discussing the technical basis and possible shortcomings of modeling. Instead, they rant:
“The report comes as world leaders meet in Brazil for this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, where extreme heat, President Donald Trump’s broad reversal of the U.S.’s climate action policy and a slowing of action to curb emissions are high on the agenda. Last year was the hottest on record and the first to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the report shows. The IEA projects that under current policies, the world is on track for 2.5 to three degrees C of warming by 2100, far above the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperatures below two degrees C. The report warns that the 1.5-degree-C target will be out of reach without the removal of carbon dioxide with technologies such as carbon sequestration. The agency says that if countries rapidly scale up renewables, energy efficiency and clean fuel use, however, further warming may still be preventable. Climate advocates have pointed to other mitigation efforts beyond policy that could muddy the IEA’s forecasting. ‘There’s a revolution happening right now and it’s in renewables and electrification,’ said Dave Jones, chief analyst at Ember, a London-based energy research organization, to the New York Times. ‘Scenarios based on policies and legislation are behind the curve of technology change.’”
Bosh. As we wrote last week, there is something of a push among alarmists tiptoeing away from their earlier predictions to say the curves have bent down because of aggressive climate action that never happened not because someone reprogrammed the computer. But Scientific Zealotry, as we quoted above, takes the opposite tack, attributing this new projection to “a global lack of ambitious climate policies” not success of same. Moreover, as Bjorn Lomborg noted:
“Climate myth: Solar and wind are taking over the world/ No/ New report from International Energy Agency shows that solar and wind will cover 12-16% of global energy by 2050”
Solar and wind combined. Not each. Then he complains:
“Yet, The Guardian claims new report shows renewable ‘transition “inevitable”, despite Trump’”.
Well, they would, wouldn’t they?
There has been a lot of talk lately about massive solar (and wind) additions in China, whose emissions have stopped increasing as a result. Whether this is to save dirt-cheap coal from local mines, or to keep the solar panel factories going is a matter of speculation but the net result is positive either way, I would say. Because as much as I dislike over-zealous political action, forcing people to switch prematurely, I do live in a highly functioning society (Denmark) with close to zero fossil electricity generation , having previously been >90% coal-based, and I happily drive an EV myself. China also has a great internal interest in selling EVs to keep production high and to limit dependence on imported oil, which leaves it strategically vulnerable. Again, this does in fact put quite a dent in the additional CO2 emission which would have otherwise taken place.
I think every ton of fossil fuel that is kept in the ground, for later or for good, is a good thing, provided it does not come at the cost of someone's free choice or prosperity. There is a tsunami of solar spreading from the equator, because it is a low-cost source of cheap electrical energy, which can be used to charge and EV, or cool down the house. And for daytime industrial production, to some degree.
When you can't be with the energy transition you love, love the one you're with!
The human race, or more specifically the Western world, has convinced itself that climate warming since the Industrial Revolution is due almost entirely to the use of fossil fuels. However, it is more likely that the situation is the exact opposite, that global warming is not caused by CO2 increase, but rather that CO2 increase is a result of global warming.
The total carbon dioxide content of the oceans is about fifty times that of the atmosphere (“The Oceans as a CO2 Reservoir”, Takahashi & Azevedo, American Inst. of Physics, 1982). The solubility of CO2 in water varies inversely with temperature, so that when temperature decreases CO2 solubility will increase and the oceans will in effect suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. At the end of the last ice age for example, atmosphere CO2 level fell to about 180 ppm. Similarly, when temperature increases solubility will decrease, resulting in the oceans venting CO2 into the atmosphere so that the atmospheric level will increase.
Our planet undergoes regular variations in surface temperature which are entirely independent of human activities. Think about the Roman Warm Period followed by the Dark Ages, then the Medieval Warm Period followed by the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the LIA about 1850 our world has been gradually warming up (independent of anything we humans have been doing) and the oceans have consequently been releasing CO2. And yes, humanity has also been releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, but in comparison to oceanic venting this is probably a drop in the ocean (pun intended).
Carbon dioxide is necessary for life. Had the CO2 level fallen below 150 ppm at the end of the last ice age, land life would have disappeared. We also know that the greater the atmospheric CO2 level the more abundant are crop yields. The greatest threat to humanity is not CO2 release from fossil fuels but the possibility of another ice age in which, like it or not, CO2 levels will decrease and crop yields will take a nose dive. If you really want to see global catastrophes, think about what would happen if crop yields went down to a fraction of their present values and the consequent worldwide squabbling for the remaining scraps of food.
In the tropics where you have pretty much consistent sunlight 12 hours a day, solar makes a lot of sense. Just like in certain areas (caribean islands) where the wind is blowing at a steady pace from mostly the same angle for about 360 days a year, wind energy makes a lot of sense. And if you have big differences in altitude (switzerland), hydro makes a lot of sense. There are also places where you have none or very little of the above (Canada?) and that's where oil, gas and coal make a lot of sense!
Just don't force the sensible thing of one place onto another where it's nonsense.