Last week BP released its Statistical Review of World Energy. I always do a series for Forbes on this annual data release, and I always like to start out with the most alarming trend in the data: Rising carbon emissions.
This year, BP subtitled the report “An Unsustainable Path”, noting that despite the Paris Climate Accord and rapid penetration of renewables, global carbon dioxide emissions still grew last year at double their ten-year average.
I covered this news for Forbes in BP Warns Of An Unsustainable Path. Quoting from the article:
Emissions were driven by increases in consumption of all the major fossil fuels. Coal consumption increased for the second year in a row in 2018, following three years of decline. Global oil consumption increased by 1.5% to a new all-time high. And natural gas consumption was up over 5%, one of the strongest rates of growth for over 30 years.
Thus, even though renewables grew by 14.5% -- near the record-breaking pace of 2017 -- they only accounted for 26% of the total global increase in global energy consumption. To put it another way, modern renewable energy consumption (mainly wind and solar power) grew by 71 million metric tons of oil equivalent in 2018. But fossil fuel consumption grew by nearly four times that amount, hence the increase in carbon dioxide emissions.
As I note in the article, there are a number of drivers, but the single-biggest one over the past 30 years has been the growth of coal consumption in Asia, particularly in China. This isn’t just because the Chinese are increasing their demand for electricity, but it is a consequence of the U.S. outsourcing manufacturing to China. Because their GDP is more CO2 intensive than ours, by outsourcing manufacturing we are increasing global CO2 emissions.
We are in a tough spot. There is a lot of celebrate, but it hasn’t been enough to stem the rise of carbon dioxide emissions. And we are going to have to deal with that for decades to come.