Ukraine and the Great Energy Reset
Posted by freedomforall 2 years, 1 month ago to Politics
Excerpt:
"If there were ever a time for energy realism, it is now. The data are clear regarding the challenge, in cost and time, to abandon hydrocarbons. The European Union and the United States have, over the past two decades, spent more than $5 trillion and made countless mandates and exhortations in the service of replacing oil, natural gas, and coal. They didn’t do these things to minimize the now starkly evident risks of dependence on Russia (or OPEC, for that matter) but to “decarbonize” the global energy system.
Overall global energy demand is up 50 percent since 2000 because of economic and population growth. To put it in terms that illustrate the scales involved: that growth equals twice the total annual energy use of the United States. That growth was fueled by a 30 percent increase in global oil production and a 60 percent increase in both coal and natural gas production.
Yes, the $5 trillion spent on alternatives did help reduce the hydrocarbon share of all energy use. It’s down to 84 percent today—a mere two percentage-point decline relative to two decades ago. Meantime, burning wood still supplies far more energy than all the world’s solar panels, and oil still fuels nearly 97 percent of all the world’s transportation.
The energy policies of the past two decades have utterly failed to chart a path toward a future free of hydrocarbons—and more critically, free of dependencies on regimes unfriendly to the West."
"If there were ever a time for energy realism, it is now. The data are clear regarding the challenge, in cost and time, to abandon hydrocarbons. The European Union and the United States have, over the past two decades, spent more than $5 trillion and made countless mandates and exhortations in the service of replacing oil, natural gas, and coal. They didn’t do these things to minimize the now starkly evident risks of dependence on Russia (or OPEC, for that matter) but to “decarbonize” the global energy system.
Overall global energy demand is up 50 percent since 2000 because of economic and population growth. To put it in terms that illustrate the scales involved: that growth equals twice the total annual energy use of the United States. That growth was fueled by a 30 percent increase in global oil production and a 60 percent increase in both coal and natural gas production.
Yes, the $5 trillion spent on alternatives did help reduce the hydrocarbon share of all energy use. It’s down to 84 percent today—a mere two percentage-point decline relative to two decades ago. Meantime, burning wood still supplies far more energy than all the world’s solar panels, and oil still fuels nearly 97 percent of all the world’s transportation.
The energy policies of the past two decades have utterly failed to chart a path toward a future free of hydrocarbons—and more critically, free of dependencies on regimes unfriendly to the West."
I can still see the German delegates laughing and mocking him.