After spending $2 trillion on renewables, the world uses more fossil fuels than ever

By Bjorn Lomborg
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
October 11, 2024
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: United States

Des­pite huge en­thu­si­asm for shift­ing from fos­sil fu­els to green en­ergy, this tran­si­tion just isn’t hap­pen­ing. Im­ple­ment­ing a sig­nifi­cant change in our cur­rent tra­jec­tory would be pro­hib­i­tively ex­pen­sive. A ma­jor pol­icy over­haul is needed. On a global scale, we are in­vest­ing nearly $2 tril­lion an­nu­ally to cre­ate an en­ergy tran­si­tion. In the last 10 years, so­lar and wind power use has reached un­prece­dented lev­els. How­ever, this in­crease hasn’t led to a re­duc­tion in fos­sil fuel con­sump­tion. In fact, fos­sil fuel use has grown dur­ing this pe­riod. Numer­ous stud­ies show that add­ing re­new­able en­ergy adds to en­ergy con­sump­tion in­stead of re­plac­ing coal, gas or oil. …Solar and wind are en­tirely de­ployed in the elec­tric­ity sec­tor, which makes up just one-fifth of all global en­ergy use. We are deal­ing with a small part of a vast chal­lenge and ig­nor­ing all the “too hard” prob­lems like steel, ce­ment, plas­tics and fer­til­izer.

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