\”Global primary energy grew by 2.9% in 2018 – the fastest growth seen since 2010. This occurred despite a backdrop of modest GDP growth and strengthening energy prices. At the same time, carbon emissions from energy use grew by 2.0%, again the fastest expansion for many years, with emissions increasing by around 0.6 gigatonnes. That’s roughly equivalent to the carbon emissions associated with increasing the number of passenger cars on the planet by a third.\” Spencer Dale offers these and other insights in his introduction to the the 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. It\’s one of those books of charts and tables I try to check each year just to keep my personal perceptions of economic patterns connected to actual statistics. Here are a few figures that jumped out at me.
Renewable energy appears to be coming of age, but to repeat a point I made last year, despite the increasing penetration of renewable power, the fuel mix in the global power system remains depressingly flat, with the shares of both non-fossil fuels (36%) and coal (38%) in 2018 unchanged from their levels 20 years ago. This persistence in the fuel mix highlights a point that the International Energy Agency (IEA) and others have stressed recently; namely that a shift towards greater electrification helps as a pathway to a lower carbon energy system only if it goes hand-in-hand with a decarbonization of the power sector. Electrification without decarbonizing power is of little use. … On the supply side, the growth in power generation was led by renewable energy, which grew by 14.5%, contributing around a third of the growth; followed by coal (3.0%) and natural gas (3.9%). China continued to lead the way in renewables growth, accounting for 45% of the global growth in renewable power generation, more than the entire OECD combined.
Finally, here\’s a table showing carbon emissions in 2018. This is a trimmed-down version of a bigger table in the text. It mainly shows carbon emissions by region. (CIS is \”Commonwealth of Independent States,\” which refers to the remnants of what was once the Soviet Union.) Notice that the Asia-Pacific region accounts for half of all global carbon emissions, with China alone accounting for more than one-quarter of global carbon emissions. Also, the average annual growth rate of carbon emissions was negative for North America and for Europe from 2007-2017, but rising during that time frame in Asia Pacific, as well as Africa, the Middle East, and South/Central America. As I\’ve written before, a meaningful approach to limiting or reducing global carbon emissions will need to include North American and Europe, but our participation won\’t be nearly enough.