In case you missed it, last Thursday the 22nd of April was Earth Day 2021. To coincide with
that event, U.S. president Joe Biden and his climate envoy John Kerry held a climate summit
involving 40 world leaders to try to lock in some concrete actions ahead of the pivotal
COP 26 climate conference to be held up in Glasgow in November. By coincidence, last week also saw
the publication of the 2021 Global Energy Review from the International Energy Agency or IES,
which you regular viewers of the channel will know is one of the organizations I
often refer to for reliable data and statistics on current and future global energy use. They've
been going for decades now and they've kind of earned a reputation as the gold standard
of analysis on how our world is progressing with the transition to renewable technologies and a
more sustainable way of organizing our societies and infrastructure. There was a lot of media
reporting last year about green recoveries and new paradigms in work-life balance potentially leading
to a permanent reduction in urban pollution and global emissions, and no doubt we all
caught a glimpse of what the world might look like without fossil fuels constantly belching out their
filthy exhaust fumes all over the place. We all marvelled at the before and after photographs from
some of the world's most polluted cities and looked forward to the promised great green reset
in the way we all live our lives as a result of the existential soul-searching we'd all
been given the chance to partake in during the enforced lockdowns. It was all very enlightening.
In some cases quite literally! But it looks like we might be edging ever closer to the end of the
pandemic tunnel. So what does the IEA prognosis for our global greenhouse gas emissions trajectory
look like now? You might want to sit down for this bit. Hello and welcome to Just Have a Think.
We all know only too well what an extraordinary year 2020 was. You don't need me to reiterate
what we all went through, especially if you or a member of your family was one of the people
unfortunate enough to be directly afflicted by the dreaded 'C' word. One very slender silver lining
to last year's horrendous thundercloud though was the fact that global greenhouse gas emissions
took an historical nosedive, dropping seven percent year on year. According to the IEA,
global energy demand fell by four percent in 2020. The largest decline since the second world war.
Oil consumption was the biggest loser, dropping by a whopping nine percent year on year.
That shouldn't come as a huge surprise given that the transport sector makes up almost two-thirds
of total oil demand. As lockdowns kicked in all over the world, hundreds of millions of daily
road users suddenly found their morning commute now required only the navigation of their own
staircase rather than the highway into town. Air travel briefly came to an almost complete
standstill too. For the full year the aviation sector was 66% below 2019 levels, which meant
demand for jet fuel and kerosene dropped by 3.2 million barrels per day. Coal consumption also
took a pretty good kicking in 2020. The decline in electricity demand resulted in an overall drop in
global coal use of four percent. Again the biggest single year drop since World War 2. It looked
pretty grim for coal actually as energy suppliers in many markets gave preference to renewables on
their grids. And that put a squeeze on both coal and gas in the energy mix. Gas producers were able
to lower their prices in an attempt to compete - something the coal industry wasn't able to do.
And building infrastructure projects came to a grinding halt in many parts of the world as well.
That meant a big slowdown in cement and steel production - both big coal consumers. The effects
were most notable in the United States, where coal use dropped by 20% overall, and in the European
Union, where it dropped by 21%. In stark contrast though, the world's biggest coal producer, China,
actually managed to increase consumption as it reopened its coal mines and restarted its
immense industrial capability following a brief initial lockdown right at the start of the year.
We'll come back to that in a minute. Global gas consumption declined by 75 billion cubic metres,
which in absolute terms is the biggest drop ever recorded. And even in relative terms
it still equals the record drop of 2009 following the stock market crash. Overall global demand for
nuclear power also dropped noticeably last year, by about four percent. Again that was the largest
decline since the Fukushima accident a decade ago. The EU saw a drop of 11% as a result of
the overall slowdown, and also some scheduled and unscheduled facility shutdowns for maintenance.
Japan's nuclear demand dropped by a whopping 33 percent as they temporarily closed many of
their nuclear power plants so that they could install new anti-terrorism safety features to
comply with legislation. And the general slump in consumption in the U.S translated into a reduction
of two percent in nuclear power generation. There were some new nuclear power stations coming online
though. Most notably, not surprisingly, in China - resulting in a five percent increase in that
country, and in Russia which saw a three percent increase. The real success story of last year
though, at least in terms of energy consumption, was renewables. Overall global renewable energy
for all sectors increased by three percent as the demand for all other fuels declined,
The main driver was an almost seven percent growth in electricity generation from renewable sources.
New renewable plants were continually being installed throughout the year
despite the obvious supply chain challenges and construction delays in many parts of the world.
Those installations, combined with long-term contracts and priority access to the grid, meant
the share of renewables in overall electricity generation reached 29%, up from 27% in 2019.
Increases from all renewable sources including hydropower, biofuels and bioenergy from waste
should push the share of renewables in the electricity generation mix to an all-time high
of 30 percent this year. If you combine that with nuclear power then low and zero carbon sources of
generation in 2021 will significantly exceed output from all the world's coal power plants.
All sounds very encouraging so far doesn't it? According to the United Nations the seven percent
decrease in greenhouse gas emissions that the world experienced in 2020 is almost exactly what's
required in every single year between now and 2030 if we're to stand any chance at all of keeping
average global atmospheric temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
So there was some understandable speculation last year that maybe we'd accidentally stumbled upon a
blueprint for how we might actually achieve that goal. And those increases in renewable energy
generation numbers certainly look like cause for optimism. And of course you know there's now a
massive 'but' coming don't you!.. that might be a poor choice of phrase, but I think you know what
I mean. The point is: despite everything we've just looked at, the IEA's research shows that
global energy related carbon dioxide emissions are currently heading for their second largest annual
increase in history. Demand for all fossil fuels is set to grow significantly in 2021
and overall CO2 emissions from all sectors are expected to rise by almost five percent. That's
an increase of 1.5 gigatons over 2020. Immediately wiping out 80 percent of last year's drop, and
bringing us right back to just 1.2 percent below 2019 emission levels. I did say we'd come back
to China's coal production at some point didn't I? And now seems like as good a point as any.
We've already seen that China was the only country to actually increase coal production in 2020,
and despite John Kerry's recent visit there, and an apparent agreement to cooperate on
stricter measures towards climate change mitigation, Xi Jinping shows no sign of
curtailing the behemoth coal industry anytime soon. The Chinese government has put in place
some big stimulus packages to support steel cement and other coal intensive industries,
and that comes on top of the already alarmingly rapid pace of new coal mine openings in that
country which accounted for 85 percent of all new coal mines opened in the world last year.
Now in fairness, adding 100 gigawatts of renewable power capacity onto their grid in 2020 was
certainly a step in the positive direction, there's no doubt about that. It means that
coal will account for less than half of all new electricity generation capacity in China in 2021.
But despite that, the IEA still projects that coal demand in China will increase by a further
four percent this year, which means consumption will surpass the 2014 peak to reach the highest
level ever in that country's history. China's electricity generation increases in an almost
one-to-one ratio with its economic growth. More than sixty percent of that electricity still comes
from coal, so the growth or decline of coal in China depends entirely on how quickly low-carbon
technologies like renewables and nuclear can come online. The world's largest democracy
and second most populous country, India, saw a six percent increase in coal consumption in the fourth
quarter of 2020, driven partly by declining hydropower generation the IEA projects that
the Indian economy is set for a strong economic rebound in 2021 which they reckon will drive up
coal demand by almost nine percent pushing it back up to 1.4% above 2019 levels, although
the latest news about a nasty variant causing a dramatic surge in hospital admissions over there
might yet bring another national lockdown that would make a big dent in that prediction.
You might be tempted to think that coal is now a dying industry over in the United States.
And the IEA does highlight a structural decline in the industry there, but even so 2021 is
still projected to be the first growth year for U.S. coal consumption since 2013 as electricity
consumption recovers to pre-covered levels and gas prices creep back up again. Those rising gas
prices will subdue the growth of gas in America with the IEA expecting gas consumption to stay
at about two percent lower than 2019 levels. But globally the picture is a bit different,
with a colder than normal northern hemisphere winter driving demand for heating higher. The
IEA is projecting the overall global demand to increase by 3.2% this year, which will erase
all the reductions seen last year. Oil consumption will jump back up by about 5.4 million barrels per
day which is six percent higher than 2020. That's still three percent lower than 2019 levels though,
with aviation demand projected to remain 20% lower for the whole of 2020. But even with this most
sluggish of all the fossil fuel demand growths, oil consumption is still projected to be back at
the same levels as two years ago by the start of 2022. The IEA's executive director, Fatih Birol
discussed the report in a recent interview with the Guardian newspaper. He said "this is shocking
and very disturbing. On the one hand governments today are saying climate change is their priority,
but on the other hand we're seeing the second biggest emissions rise in history. It is really
disappointing". Birol compared the current surge of emissions to the period just after the 2009
financial crisis when emissions rose by more than six percent as countries tried to stimulate their
economies through cheap fossil fuel energy... "it seems we are back on course to repeat the
same mistakes", he warned, "I'm more disappointed this time than I was in 2010". So the metaphorical
green green grass of home is still some way further off than last year's brief respite might
have led us all to believe. All of which means the decisions and agreements made by our world leaders
in Glasgow this November will determine whether we really are committed to keeping atmospheric
temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees, or whether
we'll set ourselves on a course to sail straight past those dangerous limits into a warming world
with consequences that our species has never had to face at any time in its entire existence.
I'm quite sure there'll be strong views on this report one way or another, so if you feel you want
to express yours then jump down to the comments section below and leave your thoughts there.
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Have a great week, and remember to just have a think. See you next week