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China To Dictate Energy Growth In Coming Years

September 17, 2017

China To Dictate Energy Growth In Coming Years

Oil

Natural gas, renewables expected to grow significantly

The EIA released this year’s International Energy Outlook today, outlining expected trends in energy through 2040.

The International Energy Outlook predicts that total world energy consumption will grow by 28 percent between 2015 and 2040, primarily driven by non-OECD countries. Non-OECD Asia will account for 60 percent of all energy consumption growth in the period. Significant growth is expected in natural gas and renewables consumption, with increases also seen in oil and nuclear power.

(Click to enlarge)

Source: EIA

OPEC will continue to fuel most demand growth

The IEO projects that oil and other liquids will remain the primary world energy source, with consumption growing by 18 percent in upcoming years. Like most other sectors, the growth in oil consumption will be driven by non-OECD countries, as OECD demand is projected to be roughly constant in upcoming years. The EIA expects OPEC to provide most of the increase in oil supply, with only small increases coming from non-OPEC nations.

(Click to enlarge)

Source: EIA

(Click to enlarge)

Source: EIA

Natural gas consumption will increase 43 percent thanks to China

Natural gas consumption is expected to increase by 43 percent through 2040, driven by increases in China. Increasing demand for low carbon intensity, reliable power will drive significant expansion natural gas in electricity generation.

(Click to enlarge)

Source: EIA

Near the end of the projection, natural gas is also expected to see significant growth as a transportation fuel. According to the EIA, new rules on marine fuels and the growing spread between oil and natural gas prices are projected to lead to a greater use of LNG as a maritime fuel towards the end of the projection.

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Emissions reductions and world energy demand growth

September 24, 2016

Emissions reductions and world energy demand growth

A major obstacle to cutting global CO2 emissions is growth in world energy demand. In this post I examine world energy growth projections from a number of different sources and compare them with the growth trends that will be necessary to meet emissions reductions goals. It goes without saying that there is an enormous gulf between the two. This leaves the world with a stark choice – cut fossil fuel consumption by 80% by 2050 or suffer the consequences of global warming, whatever they may be.

Demand Projections

Energy and electricity consumption projections are published by a number of different sources and expressed in different units, but they all show more or less the same thing – continued growth concentrated in the developing countries, no large increase in renewables and no significant decrease in fossil fuel consumption.

First the US Energy Information Agency. Figure 1 shows EIA’s projections of energy consumption growth in the OECD and non-OECD countries through 2040. The annualized growth rate is 1.2% (note that all growth rates are expressed as annual percentages because the projections cover different time periods). Growth is projected to occur dominantly in the developing countries:

Figure 1: EIA energy consumption projection by OECD/non-OECD country.

Figure 2 shows EIA’s projections of electricity generation growth through 2040 by fuel type (annualized growth rate = 2.0%). The contribution from renewables increases from about 6% to slightly over 10%, but overall the generation mix is not substantially different to what it is now.

Figure 2: EIA electricity consumption projection by fuel type

Figure 3 shows EIA’s annual projections of energy consumption by fuel type. By 2040 renewables still provide less than 5% of the world’s energy demand. Oil, coal and gas continue to dominate.

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How our energy problem leads to a debt collapse problem

September 15, 2015

How our energy problem leads to a debt collapse problem

Usually, we don’t stop to think about how the whole economy works together. A major reason is that we have been lacking data to see long-term relationships. In this post, I show some longer-term time series relating to energy growth, GDP growth, and debt growth–going back to 1820 in some cases–that help us understand our situation better.

When I look at these long-term time series, I come to the conclusion that what we are doing now is building debt to unsustainably high levels, thanks to today’s high cost of producing energy products. I doubt that this can be turned around. To do so would require immediate production of huge quantities of incredibly cheap energy products–that is oil at less than $20 per barrel in 2014$, and other energy products with comparably cheap cost structures.

Our goal would need to be to get back to the energy cost levels that we had, prior to the run-up in costs in the 1970s. Growth in energy use would probably need to rise back to pre-1975 levels as well. Of course, such a low-price, high-growth scenario isn’t really sustainable in a finite world either. It would have adverse follow-on effects, too, including climate change.

In this post, I explain my thinking that leads to this conclusion. Some back-up information is provided in the Appendix as well.

Insight 1. Economic growth tends to take place when a civilization can make goods and services more cheaply–that is, with less human labor, and often with less resources of other kinds as well.

When an economy learns how to make goods more cheaply, the group of people in that economy can make more goods and services in total because, on average, each worker can make more goods and services in his available work-time. We might say that members of that economy are becoming more productive. This additional productivity can be distributed among workers, supervisors, governments, and businesses, allowing what we think of as economic growth.

 

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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