Managing the Demise of the Necessary Evil
| DOI | 10.3366/gels.2020.0033 |
| Published date | 01 August 2020 |
| Date | 01 August 2020 |
| Pages | 228-233 |
| Author |
We cannot just ‘turn off’ fossil fuel. Listening to the environmental lobby as energy demand collapsed as COVID-19 struck, you could be forgiven for believing that we could, and that the oil and gas industry might soon be a fossil in its own right. But the gulf between where we are and where we want to be is as wide as it was six months ago. COVID-19 may have given the planet a much-welcome breather, but with it comes a threat of complacency that somehow these last six months have changed the world. They haven't.
So, where are we on the road to fossil fuel freedom? Let us take a reality check. Sitting in the comfort of politically mature and environmentally aware Europe, progress seems impressive. In 2019, according to BP's latest Statistical Review of World Energy
Only in the Americas do more than 10% of renewables provide non-power energy (23% in North America, 40% in Central and South America1), but this still only contributes 3.1% of the non-power energy consumption. And while bio-ethanol may not be responsible for the same level of ecological vandalism as palm oil, it still competes with precious land for food production.
The scale of the challenge in transportation, where fossil fuel substitution is particularly difficult, is equally daunting. The electric vehicle revolution shows a similar gulf between where we are and where we are trying to go. Electric cars, which are leading the way, reached global sales of 2.1 million in 2019
Other industries hugely important to our way of life also depend critically on our fossil resources – plastics, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals, which have no straightforward renewable alternatives. Then consider the renewable...
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