Managing the Demise of the Necessary Evil

Date01 August 2020
Pages228-233
Published date01 August 2020
DOI10.3366/gels.2020.0033
Introduction

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.

Current Progress on Energy Transition Growth of Renewable Energy

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 Energy1, 10% of Europe's total energy consumption came from renewable sources, and continued an upward trend; in power generation, 21% came from renewables. But that accounted for 90% of Europe's renewables. Only 10% went into Europe's non-power energy consumption – a rather less impressive 1.5% contribution.

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 20192, taking the global fleet to 7.2 million vehicles. Global growth rates of sales are in the tens of percent, but in the decade since EVs took their first tentative steps, they have reached a mere 1% of the global car fleet. At least with all major manufacturers moving to mass production of EVs, that sorry statistic looks set to improve dramatically.

Other Dependencies

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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