Powerline 12/18/2023
Posted on December 18, 2023 by John Hinderaker in Energy Policy
The Golden Age of Coal
You wouldn’t know it from reading the newspapers, but that is what we are living in. The recently-concluded COP28 conference touted a coming end to the use of fossil fuels, with coal first in line for extinction. But that isn’t happening. Robert Bryce has the data:
The [International Energy Agency] expects coal use to rise by 1.4% this year and set a new record of 8.5 billion tons.
So more coal is being burned than ever before.
That increase shows, yet again, how difficult it will be to achieve significant cuts in CO2 emissions from hydrocarbon use. Mainly due to coal use, which accounts for about 40% of emissions from energy, global CO2 emissions will set another new record in 2023 of 36.8 billion tons.
So good luck with “net zero” by 2050, or any other date. Environmentalists in the U.S. and Western Europe have succeeded in prematurely shuttering a number of coal plants, but that is virtually irrelevant. It is China and India, along with countries like Indonesia, that are driving the coal explosion. And those countries don’t even pretend to be participating in a “transition” to wind and solar energy:
China, India, and Indonesia didn’t sign the agreement to triple renewables.
But in any event, even a tripling in energy from renewables–which isn’t happening–would scarcely make a dent in the world’s demand for fossil fuels, as this chart by Bryce shows:
More:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/12/the-golden-age-of-coal.php
