The BP Statistical review of World Energy was published on Wednesday 10th June. Last year I published a short post summarising Global Energy Trends and this post up-dates those charts with the newly published data for 2014.
- Global primary energy consumption continues to grow though there are signs the rate of growth may be slowing, especially for fossil fuels (FF) (Figure 1). I suspect this may be due to a combination of high energy prices (that persisted through much of 2014) and the end of double digit growth in China.
- Consumption of every fuel type grew in 2104, including nuclear.
- In 2014, FF accounted for 86% of total energy consumption compared with 88% in 2004 (Figure 3). There is still a long way to go to end our reliance on FF. Much of the substitution comes from biomass and biofuel. Burning living plants instead of dead ones (FF) will probably have a net negative impact on Earth ecosystems.
- In 2004, new renewables (wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels etc) accounted for 0.87% of total primary energy and by 2014 this had grown to 2.98%. In 2004, nuclear power accounted for 5.91% and this has fallen to 4.42% in 2014. The 2.1% growth in share of new renewables is largely offset by the 1.49% fall in the share of nuclear power. On the CO2 account, low emissions nuclear power has been replaced by “low emissions” renewable energy (burning biofuel and timber does produce CO2). The actual energy substitutions are a little more complex.
- The most significant statistic I’ve spotted in the new BP report is the 2.6% fall in Chinese coal production. Coal consumption is unchanged from 2013 hence China is importing more coal. China produces just under half of global coal from underground mines that are often remote from market and there has long been speculation about how long they could maintain production growth. This may be a sign that the coal era is turning in China
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