The "Energy Transition" That Wasn't - Record Coal Production In 2023, Coal Gas & Oil Still At 82% Of World Energy Mix

[hatrack]

The much-vaunted “energy transition” that promised a great leap forward from fossil fuels to renewables along with a cornucopia of technologies is now struggling with history and complexity. A few facts tell the story. Despite all the talk of “decarbonization,” global coal production reached a record high in 2023. The dirtiest of fuels accounts for 26 per cent of the world’s total energy consumption. And despite all the promises of a green revolution, oil, gas and coal still account for 82 per cent of the global energy mix.

Meanwhile greenhouse gas emissions galloped to a new high in 2023. The concentration of carbon dioxide gases in the atmosphere has increased 11.4 per cent in just 20 years. At the same time, the explosion of AI and data centres is now competing for new sources of electricity from renewables, methane and nuclear energy. That demand, some experts believe, will create an “insatiable demand for power that will exceed the ability of utility providers to expand their capacity fast enough.”

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One is French historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, who is not surprised by our seeming inability to replace and subtract fossil fuels with renewables that require fossil fuels for their construction. A green energy transition on the scale promised by global power brokers simply won’t happen, Fressoz says in his new book More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy. In fact, he refuses to endorse the term green energy transition, calling the phrase a delusion and “a delaying tactic that keeps attention away from issues like decreasing energy use.”

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The problem, explains Fressoz, is that humans don’t neatly shift from one energy source to another like marionettes. Nor do they march in lockstep from biomass to coal to oil to renewables like some robot army. Evolving high-energy societies incorporate their old energy addictions into new ones to solve more problems. As a result, they consume more energy of all kinds. Transition is just “the wrong way to frame it,” says Fressoz. He has a different phrase to describe our dynamic energy state. He calls it “symbiotic expansion.” It’s the basic idea that technological society exploits different forms of energy to accelerate flows of material goods. In the process, society adds more energy sources than it ever subtracts.

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https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2025/01/02/Reality-Check-Energy-Transition/

[CoopersDad]

1. "societies incorporate their old energy addictions into new ones". EVs are a superb example. N/T

[IbogaProject]

2. Yes it was a mistake to use oil so much 100 years ago and to delay the transition

Carter had a solid plan to simply curtail the growth in demand of fossil fuels with the realistic goal of ending oil imports by around the year 2000. Energy efficiency and getting sunbelt buildings to reflect infrared heat back out. This whole climate crisis has been fueled by our economic system of short term goals, a belief in infinite growth on a finite planet and finally from debt based money creation. All our money is created at debt but the annual interest is never created. This fueled the global slave trade, colonialism, mega wars and other exploitative and extractive economic endeavors at the expense of sustainability.

That being said the most promising tech is reflective and emissive paints, I saw an abstract awhile ago where they made these 8 nanometer spheres that converted heat into an infrared frequency that escapes our atmosphere. Now this won't reverse warming but it can reduce peak energy use and it has even been shown to help keep buildings warmer in the winter by pulling heat into the walls and then somewhat into the structures from the ground.

Here are a few articles about the general idea. I hate how some big oil corp or AC manufacturer can buy these tech from the schools and stall it's release until it can't be patented and just gets ignored. This happens again and again. A simple way I explain it is Penicillin went out of patent in the 1940s and Mickey Mouse from the same time period still has copyright protection.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5413

https://www.scielo.br/j/po/a/dkmgYstmPR4rXwcTmxpLKrw/