95 Comments

What’s missing is that all the low hanging fruit are already picked, from here it gets steadily more difficult, exponential curve.

Here in Alberta they converted the last coal plant to gas this week, and the victory lap by the climate/insane was insufferable.

They chortled how the plan was 2030 and it was done by 2024 so there!!!! you climate deniers you.

But of course, when they started this in 2015 they said they would replace coal with wind and solar not gas.

And of course we are now 100% dependent on a single fuel, gas, when our lovely but useless renewables go to zero for a week or more at a time. With another $50billion investment in batteries we can ride thru a day and then freeze and die in a -40c spell.

We were within minutes of that on Jan 13 this year as the gas network almost dropped pressure too low.

Wonderful.

It’s what we get for leading the way in renewables penetration.

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When writing about carbon free emissions, if seems to me that hydroelectric should be excluded from the discussed data. It tends to inflate carbon free numbers and masks what most people are concerned about and decisions need to be made about, i.e., wind, solar, and nuclear. I would assume most everyone agrees hydroelectric is a good thing and it is already tapped out.

18% carbon free sounds great until one realizes a good chunk of that is nearly 100 yr old hydroelectric.

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Yes, and the crazies fight tooth and nail against that as well

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Yes, there’s a misunderstanding. My english is often mangled. Hope your 4th is fantastic!

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My position:

1. the evidence does not irrefutably indicate that the climate is getting hotter.

2. the evidence does not irrefutably indicate that man`s activities are causing climate change.

So I will say no more.

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Hi Roger. Another great article. I don't agree that coal is on the way out tho.

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Roger where are you speaking on the Western Slope. Also- great points and what I have been discussing with many of my friends. We have to get China (good luck) and India (potentially possible) on board to reduce coal consumption.

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If one wants abundant, affordable, reliable energy with reasonably low impact, then there is zero reason to ever built another "renewable" installation ever again.

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Excellent comments on this post. I'll start working through them with some responses, thanks!

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Roger, thanks for this. If you haven't seen it, you would probably like to take a look at Robert Bryce's substack and his recent post "Numbers Don't Lie".

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Another issue: You should include a slide explaining what "net zero CO2" means. I have always assumed it means cutting current emissions of CO2 by roughly 50%, given that nature sequesters about 50%.

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Tom Wigley had a guest post on this not long ago, he argues it is more like 80%.

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/net-zero-does-not-mean-what-you-think

He makes a strong point, but it is not widely accepted.

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The sequestered CO2 can be estimated as the difference between total anthropogenic CO2 emissions and the change in CO2 atmospheric concentration. The number oscillates, and total CO2 emissions estimates are a rough number. But claiming that 80% is sequestered sure sounds like an exaggeration. Don't forget emissions include sources other than fossil fuel combustion and cement manufacturing.

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This presentation would be better if you account separately for the volumes consumed to make plastics, asphalt and fertilizers. This may require use of proprietary data or possibly getting it from the International Energy Agency.

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What I hear from industry folks is that the use of petroleum for feedstocks accounts for ~10% of total consumption. That level is in the noise in my calculation -- However you approach it, achieving net zero requires the immediate retirement of large amounts of fossil fuel consumption, which is obviously not happening.

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First you have to define which "feedstocks" you are referring to. About 20% of what they call "petroleum liquids" is natural gas liquids (NGL). Refinery feed is mostly crude oil and condensate, and that type of "petroleum liquids" is what is used to make diesel, gasoline and kerosene. A small portion is used as asphalt. This stream has hit a quarterly peak a few years ago, and has been fairly flat (except 2020). NGL is increasing, and roughly 50% is used for chemical feedstocks. Another stream is sold as propane and butane in pressurized containers. The condensate and NGL streams have been increasing as natural gas production increases, but as I mentioned most NGL aren't used to make refined products. Condensate has a wide density range, and some of it is so light that US refineries can't use it profitably. This light stream is blended with light oil being produced by the fractured shales and exported. So as you can see this issue gets complicated, the data is hard to find. And one more point: oil companies aren't interested in disclosing the fact that the crude oil stream is depleting gradually which explains why they like to use terms such as petroleum liquids when they report production. Simultaneously we see outfits like the International Energy Agency emphasize the climate change issue, which means they also mix streams. As I wrote before, I think it's important to clear this up.

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As an FYI, one of the aforementioned NGLs is LPG (liquid petroleum gas) or propane. Almost entirely due to fracking, this country exports roughly 1 million barrels per day of propane. Total crude oil runs to refineries is about 18 - 19 million barrels per day.

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Roger, I wonder if calling "energy" one big thing, makes it difficult to see each part clearly. Like people who have no electricity in Africa are in a different situation than a Mainer who uses wood heat but has electricity that she uses for other things. I wonder what would happen if we started with people and their needs and designed energy systems up from there?

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Roger, I found the Global Fossil Fuel consumption graph potentially confusing. It says that "Getting to net zero by 2050 requires retiring >0.05 EJ of fossil fuel consumption every day starting now". Then it equates 0.05 EJ to 9 million barrels of oil.

One is tempted (and horrified) to think we have to use 9 million boe less every day. But hang on, that would reduce our oil consumption to zero in just 11 days. Of course, what it means is we have to eliminate 9 million boe *of annual consumption* every day. That's just 25,000 boe less each day.

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Here is my math:

1. in 2023, the world consumed 504.8 EJ of FF

2. There are 9322 days until 2050

3. That is ~0.054 EJ/day needed to be retired/abated to get to net zero

4. 1 EJ = 174 mboe

5. 0.05 EJ = 8.7 mboe = ~9 mboe

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First, a sanity check:

We consume ~100 mmb/day of oil. It's about 40% of total fossil fuel consumption.

If we reduce consumption by 9 mmb/day every day we will have eliminated oil in 11 days and all fossil fuels in ~26 days. So that can't be correct.

What went wrong? You divided the annual FF consumption by the number of days remaining to 2050. What this means is that the amount you reduce each day has to remove 0.05 EJ of the annual total. In other words, you have to reduce by 0.05/365 daily. After a year, each day's reduction (accumulated over a year) will have removed 0.05 EJ of annual consumption, which is what we want. Alternatively we want to reduce oil equivalent consumption by "9 mmboe/yr each day", not by 9mmboe each day.

It's actually clearer if we work in the same units (days) throughout.

1. in 2023, the world consumed 505 EJ of FF

2. That is 1.384 EJ per day.

3. There are 9322 days until 2050

4. We need to reduce daily consumption by 1.384/9322 = 0.000148 EJ every day

5. 0.000148 EJ = 25,825 boe

(6. Sanity check: cumulatively, 0.000148 EJ of daily consumption is 0.05 EJ of annual consumption, or 9 mmboe/year. )

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If we remove 0.05 EJ of annual FF consumption each year, then we would cumulatively reduce 1.25 EJ of total consumption over 25 years, taking us from 504.8 to 503.55.

We would need to remove 0.05 EJ of annual consumption every day in order for 504.08 to get to zero in 25 years.

In 2023 the world consumed ~34,240 mboe in petroleum

That equates to a total FF energy consumption of~85.600 mboe in mboe units (i.e., =34,240/0.4)

85,600/9322 = 9.2 mboe/day reduction

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The confusion is one of units. We are dealing with a rate of consumption of 505 EJ/year. That's what we need to reduce. We need to reduce it by 0.05 EJ/year/day. That is different from 0.05 EJ/day.

In fact, 0.05 EJ/year/day = 0.000148 EJ/day/day.

0.05 EJ/year/day x 9322 days = 505 EJ/year (which is what we want).

0.000148 EJ/day/day x 9322 days = 1.384 EJ/day (which is also what we want).

Each day we must reduce *annual* consumption by 9 mmboe.

Each day we must reduce *daily* consumption by 25,826 boe.

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So to recap about my original confusion. The graph says "Getting to net zero by 2050 requires retiring >0.05 EJ of fossil fuel consumption every day starting now ... what is ~0.05 EJ ... ~9 million barrrels of oil".

The statement isn't wrong, but it doesn't distinguish between annual and daily consumption. One could erroneously take it to mean (as I initially did) "each day we have to use 9 million barrels of oil less *on that day* than we did the day before".

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Yes, I see your point

In the future I’ll add “annual” to fossil fuel consumption

Appreciate the close read and good math!

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As long as CO2 is considered a problem large enough to drive policy, energy policy will continue to fail.

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I'd generally agree, as there are four legs to the stool and CO2 is part of one of those legs.

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This statement captures the dilemma perfectly. Now if you could just work this into a revised statement on the seriousness of climate change........

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I'm not sure I quite agree with your parsing of the energy "stool." For COST I'd have AFFORDABLE, agree with you on SECURE, for ACCESS I'd have RELIABLE, and for IMPACT, I'd sub EFFICIENT. I recognize that these are probably more biased toward the developed world than your choices. However, most importantly - no matter which parsing one chooses - the four legs aren't going to be even. We have to decide which way the stool will be tilted. Not even considering that is an important why we're in the current muddle. And it is my prime reason for wanting an "Energy Policy" - we need to stare into that abyss!

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If we could ever to to a place where people recognized and debated the different legs we'd be in much better shape!

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John, I see access as being different from reliable.. you can have access but it may not be reliable. And impact can be different from "efficient" ; it could mean environmental/social impacts of producing and distributing energy in a specific form.

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You need to elucidate what actually your data represents. It look erroneous to me. Are you including biomass/waste in your "carbon free" sources? That would be false. They release more carbon than fossil fuel per unit energy. Dubious you can grant them significant reductions due to supposed regrowth of biomass harvested, at anywhere near the rate of carbon released.

If you are not including biomass, then your numbers for the change in carbon free energy are way high. The actual proportion of Global Primary energy that was carbon free in 2023 was 8.2% not 18.5%. You must be using the fraudulent BP data where they multiply wind/solar/hydro by 2.6X to make them look far better than they really are while dividing nuclear by 1.2X in order to make it look worse than it actually is. You need to go to the IEA to get the correct data:

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/energy-statistics-data-browser?country=WORLD&fuel=Energy%20supply&indicator=TESbySource

So in actual fact we are not seeing any improvement in the portion of primary energy that is carbon free. Also it is incorrect to call solar carbon free, since we now know that the IPCC seriously and erroneously way underestimated the carbon emissions of solar PV as Enrico Mariutti has documented. Putting Solar PV only somewhat lower than CCGT in CO2eq gms/kwh.

The REAL TRUTH is that the global primary energy supply share of fossil fuel was 86.5% in 1997, 86.7% for combustion fuels, which are the carbon emitters. In 2022 it was 89.8%, 90.6% for combustion fuels. So we have gone backwards, both proportionally & absolutely, since the Kyoto protocols.

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I appreciate your points, and you/IEA could be correct.

That won't change the bottom line here.

One point where I have a different view is that the BP/EI data is not fraudulent.

There is plenty of room here for methodological diversity and disagreement.

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Sure it changes the bottom line. By falsely boosting Wind/Solar/Hydro by 2.6X it looks like primary energy is getting cleaner which it isn't.

And yes it is fraudulent. Because Primary energy means primary energy. Thermal power sources extract primary energy from a fuel and then convert that to electricity. They also can and do utilize the waste heat for cogeneration/CHP applications like agriculture, building heat, swimming pools, desalination or other chemical process. You can achieve 90% efficiency like that. That's why its primary energy, it is available to use if we choose to do so. So why does BP ignore that fact?

What BP/EI are really pretending to do, is invent a new metric which should be called Useful Work, rather than Primary Energy. But that would be incredibly complex and far reaching change in the data. BP is welcome to do that, that would be honest. So they won't.

Some examples of how crazy BP's method is:

Recently it was in the news that Wind Power in Germany is often too high for the grid to absorb, so they have to shutdown (brake) the Wind Turbines in Denmark. So what's that German wind doing? Just removing wind from Denmark. As wind/solar grid penetration increases you will have a whole lot of that happening, wind/solar curtailments of wind/solar/hydro/nuclear which is 100% waste. Why doesn't BP count that in their data?

And thermal power plants can't be just shutdown when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. That will destroy the boilers/turbines causing them to explode violently. People die. They have to continue burning fuel until the wind/solar drops and then they have to ramp up. That's waste. And you have to have fossil/nuclear/hydro plants spinning to generate the reactive power (mostly used by motors) that the grid needs. More fuel wasted for wind & solar. Why doesn't BP count that in their data?

And when they're giving wind/solar a giant boost for supposed efficiency, why not CCGT & ultra-supercritical coal which are ~1.8X more efficient than conventional coal/nuclear? That's a far more significant difference than the wind/solar/hydro one. Where is that in the BP data?

And fuel use. Heavy crude is largely distilled into diesel, kerosene, heating oil and bunker oil. Whereas light crude is largely converted into light distillates, largely gasoline. The heavy distillates are typically burned at 2-4X the efficiency of light crude, in diesel engines and furnaces. Where is that difference in the BP data?

And wind & solar must be increasingly stored to be used. That storage has typical round trip efficiencies of from 30% to 85%. And the long distance intermittent transmission of wind & solar has high losses of ~10%. This will all become more and more significant. Where is that in the BP data?

And wind/solar have very high embodied energy, mostly imported from Chinese coal energy. That is contained in all the vast grid infrastructure needed for wind & solar, including the long distance transmission and storage. That only adds to grid infrastructure, it is not replacing grid infrastructure. Where is that in the BP data?

And wind/solar requires buffering with fast spooling electricity sources, mostly OCGT. Otherwise much more efficient & cost effective CCGT would be used. It also economically favors the low cost, low efficiency power sources like diesel and OCGT. Where is that in the BP data?

Also it is very convenient how BP effectively divides the REAL well documented primary thermal energy of nuclear by 1.2X in their scam. Do you think BP will change that as more high temperature, high efficiency NPPs come online? Answer: No.

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Are those factors (2.6 and 1.2) the energy efficiency trick?

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See my comment above.

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