Are We Witnessing The Beginning Of The End For Fossil Fuels?
Bloomberg recently declared the era of fossil fuels irrevocably in decline: “The world is now adding more capacity for renewable power each year than coal, natural gas, and oil combined. And there’s no going back.”
The sea change in how we power our economies officially occurred in 2013, Bloomberg’s Tom Randall writes in “Fossil Fuels Just Lost the Race Against Renewables.” That year, there were 143 gigawatts (GW) of renewable electricity capacity added globally, versus just 141 GW of new fossil-fueled capacity.
Despite low oil prices, the trend toward renewables is not going to slow down anytime soon, given that the cost of solar and wind power has steadily fallen to the point that it is now cheaper than grid electricity in some parts of the world, Randall argues. “The shift will continue to accelerate, and by 2030 more than four times as much renewable capacity will be added.”
That’s for electricity generation, of course, but before you can officially call the race in renewables’ favor, you have to consider transport. Our cars and trucks and planes mostly run on fossil fuels, after all. As Vox’s Brad Plumer points out, “Electricity and heat were only responsible for about 42 percent of global CO2 emissions from fuel combustion in 2012. For clean energy to truly win the race, it will have to make inroads in other sectors as well, particularly transportation.”
An analysis by the International Energy Agency found that the amount of energy used for transport has doubled over the past three decades, and that slightly more than half of all oil is used for transport.
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