The Future of Energy
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Wind turbines and solar panels produced over 10% of global electricity last year for the first time in history, according to new research published this week by climate think tank Ember.
⚡ The deets... As global economies rebounded from the pandemic in 2021, demand for electricity grew at a record pace, totaling roughly the equivalent of adding a new India to the world’s needs.
- Renewable energy sources generated 38% of the world's electricity – more than coal (36%), which saw its largest annual growth since at least 1985.
- The researchers said solar and wind power can expand enough to limit global warming to 1.5ºC (2.7ºF), if its ten-year average compound growth rate of 20% can be maintained until 2030.
🌍 Zoom out: Russia, one of the largest producers of fossil fuels in the world, is currently facing Western sanctions limiting oil and gas exports, causing global oil prices to soar. As a result, some nations are accelerating their transition away from fossil fuels.
- The EU, which relies on Moscow for 38% of its imported natural gas, has vowed to slash Russian imports by two-thirds before next winter, and to cut them out entirely over the next five years.
- The new plans come on top of climate change policies the EU is currently negotiating, which would speed up emissions cuts and drop bloc-wide gas use 30% by 2030.
What should the future of energy look like?
From the Left
- An overwhelming majority of Democrats and those who lean Left (90%) are in favor of the US taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050, while just 9% disagree.
Source → (Pew Research)
“Republicans and oil-and-gas interests who had been on their back heels after seasons of deadly wildfires and storms now see an opening in Ukraine’s deadly conflict. Russia’s status as a leading oil-and-gas producer means the war brings higher gasoline prices, at least in the short run, and also has Europe scrambling for alternative sources of natural gas to stay warm.
Seizing on the immediate crisis while ignoring the much bigger one lurking down the road, Republicans see an opportunity to not only rough up President Biden, a climate realist, heading into November’s midterms. They’re also using the crisis advocate for their donors’ pet projects like the Keystone XL pipeline — killed, for now, by the White House because of its climate impact — or opening up more drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
It should be pointed out that this makes absolutely no sense.
For nearly a century, humans have been killing other humans for the buried treasure of black gold — from Baku to Baghdad. Dictators like Putin or Saudi Arabia’s murderous monarchs have used their control of the oil spigot to extort other nations and bend them to their will. In the present crisis, Putin’s leverage on the West would amount to a hill of beans if Europe had started earlier and more aggressively to move away from fossil fuels. Thus, building infrastructure that would lock us into oil and gas for another generation seems the height of madness.”
“At the end of February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, released a scientific report warning that the dangers of global warming are mounting so rapidly that adapting to them could soon become impossible. “Delay,” the U.N. secretary general said of the findings, “means death.”
The report came out just days after President Vladimir Putin of Russia began his assault on Ukraine, so the world’s attention was understandably trained elsewhere. But soon enough, commentators began pointing out the role that Russia’s fossil fuel trade has played in underwriting the invasion, thrusting climate change and its causes back into the spotlight…
In the immediate term, Germany and others could take measures to reduce their consumption of Russian fossil fuels, as the Times columnist Paul Krugman explains. Eliminating their use, though, would incur steep costs to the German people equivalent to those of a moderate recession…
But it’s evident that the fusion of foreign-policy and climate interests has lent more political momentum to decarbonization… Key to the transition… is increasing American production of minerals and metals required for renewable energy technology. Russia is a key supplier of those materials, so the West needs to ensure it doesn’t become just as reliant on Russia for clean energy production as it is now for fossil fuels.”
From the Right
- A majority of Republicans and those who lean Right (53%) oppose the US taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050, while 44% are in favor.
Source → (Yahoo Finance/HarrisX)
“The good news is that the U.S. finally agreed Friday to help Europe replace Russia as its main natural gas supplier. The bad news is that President Biden is still telling U.S. gas producers he wants to put them out of business…
The White House underlined the contradiction by saying the U.S. “will maintain its regulatory environment.” More U.S. LNG exports will only be permitted to the extent they reduce emissions—for instance, by running on “clean energy.”
This is magical thinking. Liquefying gas requires long-term investment and reliable power. Facilities can’t run on intermittent renewables, and companies won’t invest billions of dollars if they think regulators will kill them once a crisis passes.
The reality today is the U.S. doesn’t have enough LNG export capacity to replace the 170 billion or so cubic meters that Russia sends Europe every year. Much of the 124 bcm/year of exports that the U.S. can technically ship are tied up in long-term contracts with Asia…
At least Europe is finally reckoning with its climate and energy follies. The European Commission this week committed to streamline regulations to fast-track LNG import projects. Germany is planning to extend the life of its coal plants, and the U.K. is embracing oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.
Too bad the Biden Administration is still living in la-la land.”
“There is a perfectly respectable argument to be made that the world should be reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions. There’s also a perfectly respectable argument to be made that the West’s current “race to net zero” is not only reckless, but, given the attitude of major GHG emitters such as China, Russia, and India, largely pointless. The idea that the West is going to inspire these countries to change their ways with the force of its moral example is laughable, an embarrassing display of both naivete and self-importance.
It is also the case that by participating in this “race,” the West is putting itself at a substantial geopolitical disadvantage, both by weakening its own economies and by putting itself in a position where it has to rely on unfriendly or unreliable countries for its energy, something, of course, that is particularly true of those EU countries which have become dangerously dependent on Russian oil and, even more so, natural gas. That’s not a problem that is going to be fixed overnight, and it is also a problem that, in the wake of the Russian war on Ukraine, has become very pressing indeed.
To build Europe a bridge away from dependence on Putin’s oil and gas… the U.S. and, yes, Europe need to increase new production. And for that to take place the growing legal, regulatory, and ESG-related onslaught on the oil and gas sector has to be halted.
If it’s not, the main beneficiary won’t be the climate, but Putin.”
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