UK net zero is a government policy driven by fear of climate change. It requires UK emissions of carbon dioxide to cease or be entirely removed from the atmosphere by 2050.
The energy transition is a government scheme to achieve UK net zero. The UK government wishes to be a global leader in these matters.
I am not a climate change denier. However, I abhor the ignorant climate alarmism of Greta Thunberg and Just Stop Oil.
Climate change is real and will cause damage, but mankind does not face an existential crisis because of it. I do not have space to corroborate that point here, so let me just commend “Apocalypse Never” by Michael Shellenberger, “Unsettled” by Steven E Koonin, and “False Alarm” by Bjorn Lomborg, as but three examples of well researched books which do.
The rhetoric surrounding net zero is troubling. The International Energy Agency (IEA) Roadmap “Net Zero by 2050” is an example of the wildly overoptimistic forecasting which proponents of net zero indulge in.
Established trends are generally more reliable indicators of what the relatively near future might bring. To gauge recent trends in total energy supply (TES), I used the IEA’s excellent Energy Statistics Data Browser.
I can only briefly summarise here a few of the facts I discern from the IEA statistics along with the conclusions I draw from them. I urge you to investigate the IEA data yourself.
Total energy supply
The numbers below are all related to “TES by source”. In aggregate, this is much bigger than total electricity supply.
In the UK, electricity today accounts for less than one third of total energy supply, although, with its plans for the electrification of motor transport and the ending of gas central heating etc, the UK government envisages a much larger share for electricity by as soon as 2030.
However, returning to some facts…
The global energy supply grew from 370 million terajoules in 1990 to 620m TJ in 2022.
There was no globally significant rise in the energy supply from solar or wind over that period. In 1990, they comprised 0.4% of the total and 3% in 2022.
As for nuclear, it has slipped back from 6% of the global total in 1990 to 5% in 2022. The use of coal, however, increased from 93m TJ to 172m TJ.
Natural gas and oil also increased. Today, fossil fuels together provide approximately 80% of global energy supply by source.
The TES of China has quintupled over the past thirty years. At 125m TJ in 2022, it well exceeded that of the US (90m TJ).
That growth came from coal (22m TJ in 1990, rising to 97m TJ in 2022). In the last eight years, China has emitted more CO2 than the total emitted from the UK in its entire history, according to Oxford University’s Our World in Data.
India, with a TES now eight times that of UK, has adopted a similar coal-oriented path to growth. Wind and solar today account for approximately 4% of TES in China and 1.75% in India.
Africa. Wood and animal waste provided 52% of the TES of Africa in 2022. In many African countries this remains the prevalent source (e.g. Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, etc).
Even in the continent’s largest economy, Nigeria, wood is still the single largest energy source. The human health cost of this is dreadful. The limitations it places on economic growth equally so.
Africa urgently needs more and better energy supply. Wind and solar today make a negligible contribution to Africa’s energy supply.
The UK TES has fallen from 8.5m TJ in 1990 to 6m TJ in 2023. This I regard as a strong indicator of deindustrialisation.
The UK’s complete replacement of coal by natural gas was an environmental improvement. However, that apart, there are no revolutionary changes in the UK energy mix.
Solar and wind have increased from essentially zero to about 8% of TES in 30 years. In 2022, the UK accounted for just 0.9% of global energy supply.
The achievement of UK net zero would have no meaningful impact at the global level.
Net zero
To believe that wind and solar will take over from fossil fuels and dominate the world’s energy supply by 2050 is, for a host of reasons, delusional.
Whilst nuclear could and should play a very much larger role, thanks to lack of planning and encouragement, that will take several decades to happen.
The widespread use of expensive and volatile hydrogen is surely a pipedream and carbon capture and storage is a very expensive “add on,” with little to commend it to the developing world.
Fossil fuels are going to be needed for a long time yet, especially to enable developing nations to grow and prosper
Today, thanks mostly to past and current government mismanagement, much of UK industry struggles to be competitive in international markets.
This is in part due to the UK’s exceptionally high energy costs, especially for electricity, a fact largely attributable to government over-taxation and unhelpful interference in markets, supposedly in pursuit of net zero.
Accordingly, the UK continues to deindustrialise whilst importing a huge volume of manufactured goods from China, a country which uses vast quantities of coal and electricity generated by coal to produce them.
A strong and resilient economy, capable of dealing with the challenges of climate change, needs several plentiful sources of affordable and dependable energy. This is true for all nations.
Net zero will not achieve that outcome for the UK. The delusion which is net zero needs to be replaced with a credible modern energy policy, as a matter of urgency.
Malcolm Webb is is the former chief executive of trade body Oil and Gas UK (OGUK)
Also read:
Team GB Energy – going for green gold
We need to think big on energy transformation
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