Does the graph make sense? Yes it does, When might we see dots in the Green Quadrant? Beats me. Does it vindicate the de-growthers and energy restricters? No.
To elaborate a little, while the graph makes sense, as many have pointed out it needs familiarity with the subject, the ability to crunch numbers and a bit of reflection before it hits you in the proper place. Thus I would say it provides another angle of the same view, but it is not easily accessible.
One problem I have with it is that it feeds the current "hell of percentages" that we are living in. Yes, I do agree that the relative movement of energy consumption vs energy source is interesting. It does feed the increasing number of people who see percentages as absolutes rather than relative. A lot of people actually believe that one percentage can be compared to another, directly. In this figure, relative growth of fossil fuel use in the 1970's is a very different absolute than the same relative growth in the 2010's. And that is important for understanding the magnitude of the problem.
I do not think the graph makes it easy to understand the magnitude of the problem ahead of us, nor what that magnitude means in terms of how we should go about facing the problem. I apologize for saying that without offering how it could achieve that goal, because I believe criticism should be constructive.
The problem is not merely one of energy use and energy source. It is also about quality of energy, which includes the rather important parts of energy density, power density and energy storage. Many of the solutions promoted as replacements of fossil fuels lack severely in one or more of these parts. And I really do not believe that one graph or figure could capture the complexities in this issue.
That said, I do believe you have made a graph that brings a new and important angle of view on the discussion. At least for me it is a useful, as I am in the business of helping global shipping figure out how to get from here to there in a realistic manner.
Andy in TX suggested coloring the dots by decade. That might be revealing, but my guess is that the decades would be spread out in uninterpretable ways (unless energy consumption increase shows some temporal pattern). More revealing might be coloring the dots by global GDP growth of the year represented. My guess is that this would show the direct correlation between energy consumption and GDP growth, which is also a valuable lesson. (Someone else suggested a separate graph on this, but you might be able to depict it by coloring the dots appropriately.)
Another small comment: There is a typo in the top blue box. It should say "implied by a 50% [not 80%] reduction from 2020, 7.4%."
The International Energy Agency believes that the current crisis in obtaining fossil fuels will drive nations to accelerate their use of renewables and nuclear, thus significantly reducing emissions, resulting in 2025 being the peak year for global emissions. Changing a nation's energy mix takes considerable time. Approval for new reactors especially. This projection seems optimistic to me? And if emissions peak in 2025, what does that say about emissions in 2030 or even 2050? Here are a few excerpts:
Carbon emissions from energy to peak in 2025 in ‘historic turning point’, says IEA
International Energy Agency says Ukraine invasion boosted state spending on clean energy and ‘will accelerate transition to renewables’
Global carbon emissions from energy will peak in 2025 thanks to massively increased government spending on clean fuels in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to analysis by the world’s leading energy organization.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) said that government spending on clean energy in response to the crisis would mark a “historic turning point” in the transition away from fossil fuels, in its annual report on global energy.
The invasion of Ukraine has prompted an energy crisis around the world, with global gas prices initially surging. The crisis has caused steep inflation that has made households poorer around the world.
Governments have been scrambling to find other sources of energy. Some analysts have questioned whether fears over energy security could lead to the use of fossil fuels for longer, slowing the world’s race to net zero carbon emissions. Some countries – including the US and the UK under previous prime minister Liz Truss – have pledged to encourage fossil fuel extraction to try to ease prices.
However, Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director and one of the world’s most influential energy economists, said the energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion “is in fact going to accelerate the clean energy transition”.
Great Q, this graph uses BP 2022 for energy consumption, which adopts a conversion factor for placing fossil and non-fossil on a comparable basis (see their methodology). If we assume that fewer EJ of non-FF are required to replace equivalent FF, then that should make the substitution of the former for the latter easier, or at least in principle. And year, the green quadrant is still a lonely place.
On another note - you are still in Oslo? I work for the Norwegian government, and have tried to contact you to ask if you would hold a seminar and weather extremes and the misuse of RCP8.5 for ministerial and/or parliamentarian offices. Could that be interesting for you? I used the email address oystein.sjolie@gmail.com.
I like the way you illustrated the huge divide between reality (the green square) and the 'renewable energy NOW!' narrative. However, I think your last paragraph is just more 'stardust and fairy tales' - there is no way renewables will EVER make it into the green square - they will just keep getting farther away as global energy needs continue to rise MUCH faster than renewable production does.
Now, if you REALLY want to get into the green square, the answer is nuclear power, and lots of it.
I like it but I agree with the others that it takes some thought to figure out.
Small point - I'd put the X and Y axes as thicker lines to make clearer the quadrants. And come up with some names for the other quadrants too. Putting dates on the data points (or perhaps coloring them by decade or some other periodization) would also be helpful.
We spent about 30 minutes discussing it. These are primarily master's students in the Bush School international affairs program in a required course. In general, once we'd talked it through, people thought it worthwhile but it definitely took some time for everyone to think it through. The class really wanted labels on the points (and were particularly interested in the outliers). They also found the dashed and solid blue lines not intuitive (even though such lines are something we've been using a lot in class exercises) and thought the graphic would be stronger if they were given more detailed lables.
After thinking about their comments and our discussion, I think one way you could help people quickly see the point would be to give some examples of how much of a change it would take to move a recent data point into the green quadrant - such as "energy use in 2020 would have had have been X% lower or Y% more renewables to have moved into the green zone." It might also be useful to construct a hypothetical green zone for, say, 2030 if energy use between now and then continues on trend - presumably it would shrink to the extent reductions are smaller than the plan requires. Maybe even see if you can say "For every failure to move X toward the green zone in the next five years, the green zone area shrinks by Y%" or something? That's a half-baked thought but I think human brains are really good at comparisons and so having one might help people grasp it.
Wow, thanks. This is really good feedback. I really like the idea of illustrating how much change in the real world would be necessary to move a point into the green quadrant. It is so challenging to illustrate the magnitude of the decarbonization challenge. I really appreciate this!
The graph is pretty clear after a bit of thought. The lack of a date axis was disorienting at first but date is not immediately relevant to the message.
It certainly makes the size of the required change in behaviour starkly obvious.
That is true so far. It could change, but the point is there is a very long way to go. I suspect Roger is making the point that those who imagine a huge reduction in emissions by 2030 or 2050 might not fully realize the challenges ahead.
Oct 25, 2022·edited Oct 25, 2022Liked by Roger Pielke Jr.
The concept is good. I'd exchange the axes. Although this would put the Green Quadrant in the bottom right it would show that the policy objective would be to change (reduce) the slope of the Delta-Energy_Consumption: Delta_Fossil_Fuel_Use relationship. I think this is the point commenter Donald Rapp is making as well. Then rather than representing the SSPs as a quadrant in the graph, you could take a marker scenario (say, SSP2-4.5), analyse it in the same terms of Delta_EC and Delta_FF and show it as its own population of data points in the graph. You could also then highlight specific years in the SSP population (e.g. 2050, 2100) to illustrate where that SSP would take us. While you're at it, how about a similar graph, except instead of using change in fossil fuel use as a variable, show CO2 emissions? This would then show what the climate policy objective actually is: to decouple energy use from CO2 emissions. Not to decouple energy from fossil fuels in and of themselves. You could have "green quadrants" for any pair of variables in the Kaya Identity.
You make a good point that “climate policy objective actually is: to decouple energy use from CO2 emissions. Not to decouple energy from fossil fuels in and of themselves”, although the graph is still a great step forward.
Jacob R. Borden, an associate professor of chemical and bioprocess engineering at Trine University, wrote in an oped in the WSJ recently that “While 70% by volume of each barrel of oil is used for combustion, the other 30% materially contributes to almost every consumer product on the shelf. … Using 70% of the barrel for fuel subsidizes all the products made from the other 30%.”
So we better figure out how to scrub CO2 from oil because we are going to need that 30%. In fact, the Economist magazine recently noted a study that said 80% of our sulfur, used to make sulfuric acid, which is then used to refine “green” mineral ores, also comes from oil.
"... the other 30% materially contributes to almost every consumer product on the shelf." Indeed, and we don't have substitutes (at anything remotely close to the scale needed) for those other uses of oil (and gas). It's often poorly understood how many industrial processes and products require oil and gas as feedstocks. I see a lot of surprise that short supplies and high prices for gas translate into shortages and high prices for fertiliser. If more people understood the Haber-Bosch process and its role in agriculture they would not be so surprised. Until we can make hydrogen from electrolysis at scale and inexpensively, we will need gas to produce food.
I think that the two blue lines work well with the vertical and horizontal scales. There is some lack of clarity in understanding the black dots. Presumably, each black dot represents a year since 1965? According to the black dots most of these years had annual total energy growth in the range 0% to 7% with the bulk of data between 0% to 4%. A relatively few black dots occurred with negative change in total energy (I presume due to global recession) but only one of these points had an increase in total energy combined with a decrease in fossil fuel consumption. So your point is that (1) there is hardly any doubt that total energy consumption will increase in the future but there is no evidence yet that this can be coupled with a decrease in FF consumption.
Another aspect is that one could draw a 45 degree line passing through (0,0) where the change in total consumption = change in FF consumption, and when a data point lies above that 45 degree line, then the % increase in total consumption is greater than the % increase in FF consumption. In that case, the % contribution of FF to total has decreased (a desirable event) while when a black dot lies below the 45 degree line, FF consumption increased faster than the total (undesirable). While there are more points above the line, there are also quite a few below the line. The great goal of reducing FF consumption while increasing total consumption seems far away. A lesser goal of reducing the annual increase in FF consumption below the annual increase in total seems within reach?
But I think your main points are (1) The green quadrant represents the region where the total increases per year but FF decreases per year, and historically, we barely scratched the edge of that region, and (2) that all the black dots lie so far to the right that it seems like a herculean stretch for the world to move into the green quadrant, let alone within the blue lines in the green quadrant.
The graph makes sense to us nerds who take the time to think it through. Pick your percentage of the general population that falls into this category................I pick ..01%.
I think targeting filling the green quadrant with data because of fears of the impacts of climate change is a fools errand. Increased global energy consumption will continue and is a measure of success in addressing society's needs. See the work of Mark Mills.
Those advocating intentional degrowth or energy consumption restrictions because of the fears of climate change are..................pick your noun ..............I choose "fascists".
There is overwhelming evidence that society is robust enough to deal with whatever climate change can through at us by adapting. If I am wrong about this......so be it! But I am not wrong about this.
If the purpose of this post is to demonstrate that Net Zero targets are ludicrous and that we need to move on to develop rational energy policies, you have succeeded.
Does the graph make sense? Yes it does, When might we see dots in the Green Quadrant? Beats me. Does it vindicate the de-growthers and energy restricters? No.
To elaborate a little, while the graph makes sense, as many have pointed out it needs familiarity with the subject, the ability to crunch numbers and a bit of reflection before it hits you in the proper place. Thus I would say it provides another angle of the same view, but it is not easily accessible.
One problem I have with it is that it feeds the current "hell of percentages" that we are living in. Yes, I do agree that the relative movement of energy consumption vs energy source is interesting. It does feed the increasing number of people who see percentages as absolutes rather than relative. A lot of people actually believe that one percentage can be compared to another, directly. In this figure, relative growth of fossil fuel use in the 1970's is a very different absolute than the same relative growth in the 2010's. And that is important for understanding the magnitude of the problem.
I do not think the graph makes it easy to understand the magnitude of the problem ahead of us, nor what that magnitude means in terms of how we should go about facing the problem. I apologize for saying that without offering how it could achieve that goal, because I believe criticism should be constructive.
The problem is not merely one of energy use and energy source. It is also about quality of energy, which includes the rather important parts of energy density, power density and energy storage. Many of the solutions promoted as replacements of fossil fuels lack severely in one or more of these parts. And I really do not believe that one graph or figure could capture the complexities in this issue.
That said, I do believe you have made a graph that brings a new and important angle of view on the discussion. At least for me it is a useful, as I am in the business of helping global shipping figure out how to get from here to there in a realistic manner.
Andy in TX suggested coloring the dots by decade. That might be revealing, but my guess is that the decades would be spread out in uninterpretable ways (unless energy consumption increase shows some temporal pattern). More revealing might be coloring the dots by global GDP growth of the year represented. My guess is that this would show the direct correlation between energy consumption and GDP growth, which is also a valuable lesson. (Someone else suggested a separate graph on this, but you might be able to depict it by coloring the dots appropriately.)
Another small comment: There is a typo in the top blue box. It should say "implied by a 50% [not 80%] reduction from 2020, 7.4%."
I like the GDP growth idea!
Good spot! Thanks
The International Energy Agency believes that the current crisis in obtaining fossil fuels will drive nations to accelerate their use of renewables and nuclear, thus significantly reducing emissions, resulting in 2025 being the peak year for global emissions. Changing a nation's energy mix takes considerable time. Approval for new reactors especially. This projection seems optimistic to me? And if emissions peak in 2025, what does that say about emissions in 2030 or even 2050? Here are a few excerpts:
Carbon emissions from energy to peak in 2025 in ‘historic turning point’, says IEA
International Energy Agency says Ukraine invasion boosted state spending on clean energy and ‘will accelerate transition to renewables’
Global carbon emissions from energy will peak in 2025 thanks to massively increased government spending on clean fuels in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to analysis by the world’s leading energy organization.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) said that government spending on clean energy in response to the crisis would mark a “historic turning point” in the transition away from fossil fuels, in its annual report on global energy.
The invasion of Ukraine has prompted an energy crisis around the world, with global gas prices initially surging. The crisis has caused steep inflation that has made households poorer around the world.
Governments have been scrambling to find other sources of energy. Some analysts have questioned whether fears over energy security could lead to the use of fossil fuels for longer, slowing the world’s race to net zero carbon emissions. Some countries – including the US and the UK under previous prime minister Liz Truss – have pledged to encourage fossil fuel extraction to try to ease prices.
However, Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director and one of the world’s most influential energy economists, said the energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion “is in fact going to accelerate the clean energy transition”.
Are you able to plot some plausible projections? That would be quite interesting.
Very good idea
Another point of view of the trend to be seen on
https://blog.mr-int.ch/?p=8581&lang=en
page 11 of the pdf document
Excellent graph showing the magnitude of the challenge.
One detail however, which might weaken the magnitude: I reckon it shows primary energy? How would it look if it showed useful energy?
Great Q, this graph uses BP 2022 for energy consumption, which adopts a conversion factor for placing fossil and non-fossil on a comparable basis (see their methodology). If we assume that fewer EJ of non-FF are required to replace equivalent FF, then that should make the substitution of the former for the latter easier, or at least in principle. And year, the green quadrant is still a lonely place.
Thanks!
On another note - you are still in Oslo? I work for the Norwegian government, and have tried to contact you to ask if you would hold a seminar and weather extremes and the misuse of RCP8.5 for ministerial and/or parliamentarian offices. Could that be interesting for you? I used the email address oystein.sjolie@gmail.com.
I like the way you illustrated the huge divide between reality (the green square) and the 'renewable energy NOW!' narrative. However, I think your last paragraph is just more 'stardust and fairy tales' - there is no way renewables will EVER make it into the green square - they will just keep getting farther away as global energy needs continue to rise MUCH faster than renewable production does.
Now, if you REALLY want to get into the green square, the answer is nuclear power, and lots of it.
I like it but I agree with the others that it takes some thought to figure out.
Small point - I'd put the X and Y axes as thicker lines to make clearer the quadrants. And come up with some names for the other quadrants too. Putting dates on the data points (or perhaps coloring them by decade or some other periodization) would also be helpful.
👍👍
I'll show it to my quantitative methods class this week and get their take as well
Excellent! Let me know what they think. Thanks.
We spent about 30 minutes discussing it. These are primarily master's students in the Bush School international affairs program in a required course. In general, once we'd talked it through, people thought it worthwhile but it definitely took some time for everyone to think it through. The class really wanted labels on the points (and were particularly interested in the outliers). They also found the dashed and solid blue lines not intuitive (even though such lines are something we've been using a lot in class exercises) and thought the graphic would be stronger if they were given more detailed lables.
After thinking about their comments and our discussion, I think one way you could help people quickly see the point would be to give some examples of how much of a change it would take to move a recent data point into the green quadrant - such as "energy use in 2020 would have had have been X% lower or Y% more renewables to have moved into the green zone." It might also be useful to construct a hypothetical green zone for, say, 2030 if energy use between now and then continues on trend - presumably it would shrink to the extent reductions are smaller than the plan requires. Maybe even see if you can say "For every failure to move X toward the green zone in the next five years, the green zone area shrinks by Y%" or something? That's a half-baked thought but I think human brains are really good at comparisons and so having one might help people grasp it.
Wow, thanks. This is really good feedback. I really like the idea of illustrating how much change in the real world would be necessary to move a point into the green quadrant. It is so challenging to illustrate the magnitude of the decarbonization challenge. I really appreciate this!
It was a terrific class exercise, so I am glad you posted it at just the right time!
The graph is pretty clear after a bit of thought. The lack of a date axis was disorienting at first but date is not immediately relevant to the message.
It certainly makes the size of the required change in behaviour starkly obvious.
Thanks!
takeaway to me is that fossil fuel consumption is almost 1:1 with total energy consumption
impact of non-fossil fuels is negligible
That is true so far. It could change, but the point is there is a very long way to go. I suspect Roger is making the point that those who imagine a huge reduction in emissions by 2030 or 2050 might not fully realize the challenges ahead.
and to your point, it would be interesting to see if the dates above the 45 degree line are more recent
need to put a date on the dots
It would be nice, but not enough room.
Right. Maybe blow up that part of the chart, or make dots in color by decade.
Energy for me, but not for thee.
The concept is good. I'd exchange the axes. Although this would put the Green Quadrant in the bottom right it would show that the policy objective would be to change (reduce) the slope of the Delta-Energy_Consumption: Delta_Fossil_Fuel_Use relationship. I think this is the point commenter Donald Rapp is making as well. Then rather than representing the SSPs as a quadrant in the graph, you could take a marker scenario (say, SSP2-4.5), analyse it in the same terms of Delta_EC and Delta_FF and show it as its own population of data points in the graph. You could also then highlight specific years in the SSP population (e.g. 2050, 2100) to illustrate where that SSP would take us. While you're at it, how about a similar graph, except instead of using change in fossil fuel use as a variable, show CO2 emissions? This would then show what the climate policy objective actually is: to decouple energy use from CO2 emissions. Not to decouple energy from fossil fuels in and of themselves. You could have "green quadrants" for any pair of variables in the Kaya Identity.
Good ideas, Thx!
You make a good point that “climate policy objective actually is: to decouple energy use from CO2 emissions. Not to decouple energy from fossil fuels in and of themselves”, although the graph is still a great step forward.
Jacob R. Borden, an associate professor of chemical and bioprocess engineering at Trine University, wrote in an oped in the WSJ recently that “While 70% by volume of each barrel of oil is used for combustion, the other 30% materially contributes to almost every consumer product on the shelf. … Using 70% of the barrel for fuel subsidizes all the products made from the other 30%.”
So we better figure out how to scrub CO2 from oil because we are going to need that 30%. In fact, the Economist magazine recently noted a study that said 80% of our sulfur, used to make sulfuric acid, which is then used to refine “green” mineral ores, also comes from oil.
"... the other 30% materially contributes to almost every consumer product on the shelf." Indeed, and we don't have substitutes (at anything remotely close to the scale needed) for those other uses of oil (and gas). It's often poorly understood how many industrial processes and products require oil and gas as feedstocks. I see a lot of surprise that short supplies and high prices for gas translate into shortages and high prices for fertiliser. If more people understood the Haber-Bosch process and its role in agriculture they would not be so surprised. Until we can make hydrogen from electrolysis at scale and inexpensively, we will need gas to produce food.
It’s a fantastic graph; perfectly clear to me. It shows how unrealistic the net zero by 2050 goal is.
I think that the two blue lines work well with the vertical and horizontal scales. There is some lack of clarity in understanding the black dots. Presumably, each black dot represents a year since 1965? According to the black dots most of these years had annual total energy growth in the range 0% to 7% with the bulk of data between 0% to 4%. A relatively few black dots occurred with negative change in total energy (I presume due to global recession) but only one of these points had an increase in total energy combined with a decrease in fossil fuel consumption. So your point is that (1) there is hardly any doubt that total energy consumption will increase in the future but there is no evidence yet that this can be coupled with a decrease in FF consumption.
Another aspect is that one could draw a 45 degree line passing through (0,0) where the change in total consumption = change in FF consumption, and when a data point lies above that 45 degree line, then the % increase in total consumption is greater than the % increase in FF consumption. In that case, the % contribution of FF to total has decreased (a desirable event) while when a black dot lies below the 45 degree line, FF consumption increased faster than the total (undesirable). While there are more points above the line, there are also quite a few below the line. The great goal of reducing FF consumption while increasing total consumption seems far away. A lesser goal of reducing the annual increase in FF consumption below the annual increase in total seems within reach?
But I think your main points are (1) The green quadrant represents the region where the total increases per year but FF decreases per year, and historically, we barely scratched the edge of that region, and (2) that all the black dots lie so far to the right that it seems like a herculean stretch for the world to move into the green quadrant, let alone within the blue lines in the green quadrant.
Thanks!
The graph makes sense to us nerds who take the time to think it through. Pick your percentage of the general population that falls into this category................I pick ..01%.
I think targeting filling the green quadrant with data because of fears of the impacts of climate change is a fools errand. Increased global energy consumption will continue and is a measure of success in addressing society's needs. See the work of Mark Mills.
Those advocating intentional degrowth or energy consumption restrictions because of the fears of climate change are..................pick your noun ..............I choose "fascists".
There is overwhelming evidence that society is robust enough to deal with whatever climate change can through at us by adapting. If I am wrong about this......so be it! But I am not wrong about this.
If the purpose of this post is to demonstrate that Net Zero targets are ludicrous and that we need to move on to develop rational energy policies, you have succeeded.