Fossil fuel emissions from electricity set to fall-BBC
By Paul Homewood
h/t Robin Guenier/Jon S
The world will likely use less fossil fuels to produce electricity this year in a "turning point" for planet-friendly energy, a new report says.
It would be the first ever annual drop in the use of coal, oil and gas to generate electricity, outside of a global recession or pandemic.
As a result, less warming gases would be released during energy production.
The authors attribute the expected change to a boom in renewable energy led mainly by China.
Wind and solar now produce 12% of global electricity with enough wind turbines added in 2022 to power almost all of the UK.
Renewables are set to meet all growth in demand this year, the study from energy analysts Ember says.
Making electricity is the single biggest contributor to global warming, responsible for over a third of energy-related carbon emissions in 2021.
So phasing out coal, oil and gas in this sector is seen as critical in helping the world avoid dangerous levels of climate change.
This new study looks at data from countries representing 93% of global electricity demand.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65240094
Matt McGrath omits to tell readers that Ember are not “energy analysts”, but a lobby group with the specific aim of “shifting the world to clean electricity”. Any analysis from them should not be taken at face value.
In any event, the BBC is wrong to suggest “It would be the first ever annual drop in the use of coal, oil and gas to generate electricity, outside of a global recession or pandemic”, because fossil fuel generation also dipped between 2018 and 2019:
BP Energy Review
But more importantly, the data shows that wind and solar power are still lagging far behind, running at a 10% share in 2021. While this number will steadily rise in the next few years, it will not make much of a dent in the contribution from fossil fuels.
And the BBC report totally circumvents the very real problems of integrating large amounts of wind and solar power into electricity grids. That is precisely why China is building hundreds of new coal power plants.
According to the BBC:
"We now have reached this next turning point of starting to see a new era of falling fossil fuel power sector emissions. We know that wind and solar are the answer and we’ve just got to get on with a roadmap for building them as quickly as possible," said Dave Jones, from Ember, one of the report’s authors.
But this is no more than wishful thinking. Although renewable generation will continue to rise, this may not even be enough to meet increased demand, which has certainly been the experience in China lately.
The suggestion that fossil fuels will be “phased out” is ridiculous.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Before long the MSM will be trumpeting that every thing is ok! everones sacrifices have saved the world and we can all carry on regardless.
“Renewables are set to meet all growth in demand this year”. except at night and when the wind is too weak, or too strong …
Ember’s ‘study’ is no more than propaganda based on wishful thinking and pretending to be a report.
EMBER are one of the sock puppets that the CCC use to pretend that Net Zero is feasible. They produced another study claiming that we could have a zero carbon grid with no reliance on interconnectors by 2030 a couple of months ago. It is course full of all the usual unicorns, including assuming remarkable increases in the productivity of wind and solar. Obviously they’ve cracked how to change the climate and the latitude of the UK to give us more sunshine. Remarkable stuff.
Further to my comment above, here’s an extract from Ember’s website:
A curious ‘revolution’ given that China’s CO2 emissions have increased by 237% over the same period, substantially because of a massive increase in coal-fired electricity generation.
Shhhhhhh. They’ll censor you if you keep up with this behavior. Lol
I wonder if the huge amount of coal China burns to make solar panels is counted in the figures lauding renewables?
And how about the mining, processing and transportation of all the materials (concrete, steel, plastic, copper, rare earths etc.) needed for their construction?
Yes Robin – If you tell a big lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
Was it Lenin, or Goebbels or ………………………
Doesn’t matter does it – it is one of the few truths that stand close inspection.
There’s those tricky percentages again. An increase in actual amount (no doubt) becomes a reducing %, just like that.
‘According to the BBC’ which is short for –
“state-affiliated media accounts” which are defined as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution”.
Meanwhile Support for Germany’s Green party plummets.
Most Germans do not believe that renewables will suffice to cover the country’s electricity needs in the future, so these plans are extremely unpopular. The same is true for the Green push to end the internal combustion engine, to which two-thirds of the German population are opposed.
https://unherd.com/thepost/support-for-germanys-green-party-plummets/
Meanwhile China is said to have resumed imports from Australia of iron ore and coal.
And China buys Russia’s gas …
Wishful thinking again by Ember and the BBC. Renewables are parasitic energy and cannot survive, not economically that is, without fossil fuels to balance the grid and for long-term back up. I have created an Excel file from demand and wind data for 2022 downloaded from the Gridwatch website to calculate the excess installed wind power and storage capacity required (using hydrogen or battery for storage) to guarantee supply matches demand without the use of fossil fuels. For hydrogen storage, 6.75 times the average demand of 30 GW (200 GW) of installed wind power is required plus the storage of 1 million tons of hydrogen (14.3 TWhrs). For battery, 4.5 times more than average demand is required, 135 GW, and 30 TWhrs of battery needed at an estimated cost of £11 trillion. If anyone wants to see and check out my calculation please email me at jbxcagwnz@gmail.com.
“As a result, less warming gases would be released”
‘Fewer’, BBC!!!
Could be right. The gases they are planning to emit are the “less warming” ones. So that’ll be OK then? Problem solved.
I confess I don’t know what these “less warming gases” are but I’m sure Ember would be able to tell us!
The sentence can be read as ….”fewer warming gases” ….. or ….. “less-warming gases”. I.e. Gases that are less warming than (say) CO2.
You pays yer money and takes yer choice.
Thanks, Mike and John 🙂
The thing is that I saw ‘gases’ as being the object of the sentence – so that would be fewer, whereas they would cause less warming. Ha!
Anyway, it was a good laugh.
Made all the better by McGrath’s piece on BBC News where he claimed, based on numbers supplied by China that a tiny amount that couldn’t even qualify as a ‘single action-point’ was actually relevant.
I suspect it means less warming gas.
A nother, rather than another, of my wife’s shouts at the TV
Just this minute selfishly ordered half a ton of household coal to boost the wood burning in lounge and TV snug. Should last me out until this stupid 4 May embargo is rescinded or I pop my clogs.
WRT CO2 – there is not the vestige of the slightest chance that the steady rise since COP1 in Berlin in 1995 will be checked so alarmists had better get used to it.
You’re still allowed other coal (for now) most people stopped using filthy household coal of their own volition anyway.
Nope. Cheap and burns well.
Also annoys the hell out of Gretaphiles.
Oh and further to – I’m planning to bubblewrap a couple of Citroen diesel saloons for my grandchildren. Should last them out until sanity returns with the Revolution.
Pre HDi XD2 engine I hope.
Mauna Loa CO2 data (now being updated from a nearby site) is the simple riposte to “green” wishful thinking:
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
But of course this is a “problem” that must not be solved, in order to keep the gravy train running, and maintain the flow of foot soldiers.
What will happen to our world’s economy when the pressure from the left towards the fossil fuel industry is so great that the Exxon Mobils, Shell et al stop drilling for oil and natural gas and supplies dry up? If the fossil fuel industry cannot be profitable from exploring, drilling and extracting fossil fuels will they stop doing it all together? My point being here that we use about 50% of oil to provide for our way of life economically that is not meant for energy creation, i.e. making oil derived goods like clothing, toothbrushes, medicines, batteries etc. How are we to survive?
Oil & gas companies are evil things so when they go away the world will be better.
That’s about as far as these people get I’m afraid.
For many of them, we aren’t supposed to survive. For the rest, they are too stupid to understand how the world works.
Exxon, Shell et al are big companies but they are not the leading players in the oil game which is dominated by the national oil companies of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Russia, China, etc.. Those companies will carry on drilling and producing regardless of the West’s self-destruction.
It’s simply abject nonsense to say “we should get on with building them as quickly as possible.” It might make sense to build them when fossil fuel plant needs replacing, but as the Stern Report made clear, it is only economic to use renewables and other Green technology if they replace at the point replacement is required and not before. If we do it “as fast as possible” we will wasted tend of billions, if not more. And this gives the lie to the BBC’s claim that they are interviewing some sort of independent analyst. They are allowing a group with political aims to promote those aims without making it clear that is what is going on. This is in clear breach of the BBC’s protocols. But what’s new.
The IEA recently published ‘Energy Technologies Perspectives 2023’.
“The World still relies on fossil fuels (FF) for its energy supply. The growth in clean energy supply since 2000 has been dwarfed by that of oil, gas and coal, especially in emerging and developing economies”
“Oil is the single largest source of primary energy (29%) followed by coal (26%), natural gas (23%), Solar and Wind (2%), Nuclear (5%), Hydro (2%)”
“Whilst electrification has accelerated over the last two decades, fossil fuels still dominate energy end use – 35% of total energy use in buildings and 95% in transport”
“In 2021 coal provided 75% of energy used in global steel production and over 50% in cement production while about 70% of chemical production was based on oil or natural gas.”
“Demand for ‘critical minerals’ has increased briskly in recent years yet their combined production by mass is just 0.3% of that of coal today. The extraction of critical minerals typically relies on fossil fuels”
Obviously the BBC lives in a different universe.
Whenever I read an article by a BBC environment correspondent, I am reminded of the modified lyrics somebody came up with to the song ‘Home on the range’.
Give me a home where the unicorn roam,
Where the politicians and deep state play,
Where never is heard an intelligible word
As the media gaslight and psyop all day.
The original song lyrics were
Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
You manage to get further than I ever could if you read their crap.
the correct BBC version
“Oh Give me a home where the BBbuffallo roam
and i’ll show you a house full of Bullsh*t “
Douglas Pollock’s eagerly awaited paper shows the limits to solar and wind penetration beyond which all the money is wasted (unless you are in on the scam of course). Christopher Monckton explains it here from 27:00.
Nigel: as I keep saying, the PTB are fond of quoting wind generation as being equivalent to so many million homes – based on the generator’s name-plate output: something that no turbine will EVER reach. And that’s a misrepresentation – actually, a downright lie.
Solar too, Project Fortress claims to supply 150,000 homes, the true figure is 11,000 if heating and EVs are included.
Pollock’s theory took heavy flak over on WUWT. It all got a bit ugly:
BP’s June 2022 Statistical Energy Review tells anyone who wants to read what actually happened during the last 21 years is that in 2021, fossil fuels delivered 82% of primary energy consumed whereas sun and wind delievered 6.7% an increase of 0.5% over 2020. CO2 emissions fell in Europe and the USA and rose by 124% in “Asia Pacific” (mostly China) from 2000 – 2021!
On the other hand, China delivered 32% of the whole World’s “renewables” measured only as sun and wind in 2021.
It also delivered 1300 TWh of hydropower. No mention was made by BP of the thousands of earthquakes and landslides caused by the Three Gorges Hydropower dam. Let’s all please pray that “the big one” doesn’t happen!
” We know that wind and solar are the answer …”
Everyone knows the answer is “42” — now what was the question?
We know they are an answer but a remsrkably bad one – expensive, intermittent, ugly, land-hungry. Whether there’s a much better answer we don’t know because governments have chosen rather than allowing markets to discover. Governments “knew” the answer when they wanted to do away with incandescent bulbs but it turns that was an extremely poor answer too. But they never learn.
On the subject of BBC propaganda, here is Elon Musk destroying a BBC interviewer. Copy n Paste link and enjoy.
Yet, somehow, not broadcast by the BBC in their ‘news’ clip….
But they didn’t show that bit on the 10 o’clock news, did they?
We can imagine the interviewer having a mental breakdown when he realises that the only hate speech tweet in recent times he can think of is one by Gary Lineker.
I think the best way to reply to this kind of ludicrous assumption in the headline which is using “Betteridges law” is a more concerted and co-ordinated response by a amalgamation of sites like this having a either a forum or whatever. It has to have political clout somehow, preferably a leading politician refute these claims. These claims by are generally getting harder to challenge as they now don’t care about the hoi poli, as they are following the IPCC line and using third party get out. Christopher Monkton, expresses with exquisite clarity in this video, re materials required and so on. The amount of materials required and the processing is vast and of course their is a limited supply of them, and the issue of child slave labour in the extraction.
All keep safe.
Slàinte Mhath 🥃
When you see “BBC” here, whatever the article is about, you know it’s going to be a lie, as least of omission.
It’s very grating to be forced to pay for this.
Back in the real world …..
“China approves biggest expansion in new coal power plants since 2015, report finds
Concerns about energy shortages drive increase as projects progress at ‘extraordinary’ speed
In 2022, 50 gigawatts of coal power capacity went into construction across China – up by more than half compared with the previous year, new research shows.
China approved the construction of another 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity last year, four times higher than a year earlier and the highest since 2015, research shows.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/27/china-approves-biggest-expansion-in-new-coal-power-plants-since-2015-report-finds
Reuters 14/02/2023 :
“Pakistan plans to quadruple its domestic coal-fired capacity to reduce power generation costs and will not build new gas-fired plants in the coming years, its energy minister told Reuters on Monday, as it seeks to ease a crippling foreign-exchange crisis.”
If, as we are constantly told, renewables are 9 times cheaper than fossil fuels, why is Pakistan not building wind and solar estates?
It’s been mentioned in the past how unrepresentative wind gusts at unique locations are used to hype UK storms. The Needles posted 96mph today, again way above my coastal location, within sight of the IOW on a clear day, at 57 mph.
more subtle brainwashing from the BBC. “Pointless” today .
Identify best of 5 “Recycled Environmental Words ” showing Anagrams of the following answers
Renewable, Sustainability, Carbon Footprint, Reforestation, and Global Warming.
Last one should have been pointless as it doesnt exist.
good thing is that both teams struggled and each only knew one anwer. And all were low scorers which shows that the public also dont all know these words .
I thought the host almost choked saying global warming, maybe just wishful thinking, but maybe he’s secretly not brainwashed.
‘The world will likely use less fossil fuels to produce electricity this year in a “turning point” for planet-friendly energy, a new report says.’
Britain, maybe. The rest of the world isn’t playing this stupid game.
There still remains the overlying perception that more wind means less fossil fuel generation requirement and the more that is built the sooner we will not need fossil fuel generators.
This perception is false and in her book ‘Shorting the Grid The hidden fragility of our grid system’, Meredith Angwin actually puts a figure of 1.14 as a factor of required fossil fuel generation to renewable generation capacity.
There is the regular drop to single figure Gigawatt output from U.K. renewables which has to have reliable back up to make up that deficiency.
Not only that fossil fuel generation provides the load and supply balance that renewables are unable to do and also provide inertia and reactive power, which again, renewables do not provide.
The increase in demand as evs and heat pumps increase in number requires more fossil fuel generation capacity not less.
Nuclear certainly comes into the equation but it is very slow to build and even the Small Modular Reactors do seem to be very slow in getting going. Their one advantage is that there are sites of de commissioned nuclear reactors which helps as the grid ties should exist?
‘China’s electricity sector has been in the throes of a clean revolution over the past few years, with an almost ten-fold growth in wind, solar and hydro generation. This has resulted in a roughly 18% reduction in the share of coal generation, from 78% in 2000 to 64% in 2021.’
Oh, the wiggle room for propagandists between an absolute and a percentage, between supply and demand! Not a ” clean revolution” at all but a continuing struggle for wind and solar to keep pace! It is perfectly possible over time to have a declining percentage of coal burning in electricity production while still burning ever more coal every year. Why? because global demand for electricity is growing faster than renewable electricity production therefore coal burning is producing ever more KWhs (and emissions) to fill the gap!
Such tricks in the presentation of the actualité are unworthy. If I can work it out even a BBC humanities grad can.
Ember funded by all the usual suspects like WWF, European Climate Foundation etc. scroll down to the bottom:
https://ember-climate.org/about/
So a wholly political lobbying group, not “energy analysts”.