BP Energy Outlook 2022

By Paul Homewood

BP’s Energy Outlook 2022 is now out:

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/energy-outlook.html

Here’s the highlights:

It’s based around three scenarios. They stress these are not in any way predictions:

These are the three:

This , I guess, is the key chart:

In my view, both the Accelerated and Net Zero scenarios are pie in the sky. Some countries may have promised to get to Net Zero, but have no plans of how to do it.

Nor has BP or the IEA shown how any of this is remotely achievable technically. All BP have done is assumed that the world’s economy can run largely on wind and solar power.

Which leaves us with the New Momentum, which itself assumes that current aims and ambitions will be met. Even then, emissions in 2050 will still be higher than they were in 2005, and only a quarter lower than now.

The New Momentum also seems to be wildly and unrealistically optimistic, as it assumes that energy consumption will level off in the 2030s, because of energy efficiency gains:

There is absolutely no evidence to support this. It is true that in western developed economies, energy use has levelled off in recent years, but this is largely because maturing economies tend to expand into low energy intensive sectors whilst moving away from high intensive ones.

Certainly there have been advances in energy efficiency, but these have tended to be cancelled out by increased demand. For instance, take cars – fuel efficiency has improved in leaps and bounds in recent decades, but fuel consumption has remained at high levels as more cars are on the road.

The idea, however, that energy consumption in emerging economies like China and India will soon level off is absurd.

The corollary of all this is that energy demand will continue to remorselessly rise for decades to come. Even the substantial increases in wind and thermal capacity assumed by BP under the Net Zero scenario will do little more than meet this new demand.

To put things into perspective, BP reckon that electricity consumption will double by 2050:

They also project that wind and solar capacity will increase by about 20,000 GW under the most optimistic scenario. But this will only generate about 26000 TWh, which is enough to supply the extra demand, but no more.

Given that their assumptions for energy demand are absurdly optimistic, it is plain that fossil fuel usage will still be high in 2050, even under Net Zero projections.

Finally, to reemphasise a point I made earlier, this is how BP envisage our power generation in 2050, which they say will account for a half of total energy consumption:

So, we will reliant on highly intermittent wind and solar power for about 70% of the world’s electricity by 2050!

I don’t know which world BP is living on, but it certainly is not this one!

Instead of feeding governments’ and UN agendas here, BP should be spelling out the real world, technological obstacles to this crazy Net Zero agenda.

Otherwise we will simply continue down the path of economic ruin, while the rest of the world carries on as before.