NO ENERGY TRANSITION.
JUST ANOTHER ENERGY ADDITION
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Introduction
Throughout human history, we have used tools and technology to increase our power, productivity and quality of life. From the burning of firewood to cook, heat and light our homes, to the use of horses to travel long distances and metal weapons to hunt animals for food, to the invention of the wheel to move heavy loads, and later more evolutionary systems such as windmills to produce mechanical power and wooden boats to travel long distances.
A big leap came with the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century with the invention of the steam engine. Over time, machines became bigger and more powerful. The discovery of coal and then oil in the late 19th century was a game changer, and fossil fuel consumption soared after the Second World War, leading to a one-car-per-household society from rural to urban areas that changed our civilisation as we know it today. Over the last half century, natural gas has been used extensively to heat homes, process materials and generate electricity.
From wood to coal to oil and gas, each time the output has been greatly multiplied, allowing more powerful machines to do the work for us, generating economic growth and prosperity, and also allowing the world's population to grow.
Figure 1A below shows the evolution of the use of each energy source over the last 2 centuries.
Figure 1A: World energy sources split over the last 2 centuries
There are 3 notable facts about this evolutionary diagram in Figure 1A:
1. Each time a "new" trendy energy was discovered and massively used, it did not replace the previous one, but simply added to the existing ones. The "old" energy source actually increased in consumption.
2. Since the 1950s, whenever a non-fossil energy source has been added to the mix, like hydropower, nuclear or renewable, the 3 fossil energy sources have also increased.
3. From wood to coal to oil and gas, each "new" carbon source added was more energy dense and powerful than the previous one, so the new source was quickly adopted and became the most used. The only exception to the rule is the latest "renewable" one.
1. New energy source adds up to the existing mix
On the first point, if you go back in history, when coal became the dominant energy source instead of wood, it actually increased the demand for wood. Steam engines require railways to be laid on large chunks of wood, so the demand for wood increased with the demand for coal. In addition, extracting coal from the mines required more wooden carriers and wooden tunnels, another reason why wood consumption increased with coal consumption.
Even before 1800, when wealthy families could afford it, there was a transition from wood to charcoal (made from heated wood), because charcoal is pure carbon and does not produce smoke or odours when it burns, only heat. At that time, the transition was about achieving greater density and a higher quality and more comfortable burn, but charcoal never replaced wood; it added to wood consumption. Even today, two billion of the nine billion people in the world still rely on wood for cooking and heating. We burn way more wood today than back in 1800.
The same thing happened when oil consumption boomed: More mobile machines were made, such as cars and trucks, which required more metals made by burning coal in smelters. Oil and gas platform and pipelines are mostly made of steel, which is made from coal. As a consequence, coal consumption increased with oil consumption.
While oil consumption has been growing since 1880, natural gas consumption has increased more recently, particularly after 1960. This is because it requires large-scale infrastructure, such as steel pipelines on land and LNG terminals for export overseas, which has only become possible in the last 50 years. Previously, natural gas was consumed locally or within its neighbourhood, whereas now it is a globally traded commodity via LNG export since 1960.
LNG tanker in a LNG terminal
A recurring pattern has been seen many times in the past: Any system that consumes energy will improve over time and become more efficient, becoming a better product, and of course demand for that product will increase, so that the efficiency gain is overshadowed by more demand and energy consumption. This is called the Jevon's paradox or commonly known as the rebound effect.
The rebound effect is the fact that as technology and efficiency improve, goods and services become more affordable, which increases their popularity and consumption, which increases the overall material, environmental and energy footprint. Take washing machines or refrigerators: They became so good and cheap about 50 years ago that every household now has a washing machine and a fridge, which means that the total amount of machines produced each year is now enormous, putting pressure on material and energy resources consumption.
Another example: Cars with internal combustion engines have become much more efficient in terms of litres of fuel consumed per mass of vehicle transported over 100 km. But as the car has got bigger, like the SUV, with more and more accessories like air conditioning inside, the final consumption has remained around 6 litres per 100 km over the last 50 years. That's because today's cars are much heavier than those of the 1970s. With today's technology, we could drive a 400 kg car that consumes 2 litres per 100 km, thanks to modern technology and productivity gains. Instead, we have put more stuff in the car: radio, air conditioning, screens, cruise control, more interior comfort, etc... so that today's cars weigh over 1 tonne and still consume 7 litres of diesel per 100 km, the same as 50 years ago. The total energy consumption has not decreased, but the options, gadgets, size and comfort have increased, together with more frequent use, so that overall we drive more cars and consume more fuel. The success of improved technology and productivity leads to better and cheaper products, so that on average per capita people now own more cars and drive more kilometres per person than in the 1970s, increasing overall energy consumption.
That's why the idea of an energy "transition" is absurd and inaccurate. History has shown time and time again that there is always an energy addition, not an energy transition.
2. The three fossil fuels keep increasing
Fossil fuel consumption in absolut terms has been growing at a fairly constant rate of 20% every 10 years since 1960. In relative terms, the share of fossil fuels in the total energy mix has fallen from 95% in 1960 to around 90% in 1990 and to around 83% in 2024. Taking a step back, it's clear that we're hardly making progress in eliminating fossil fuels from the energy mix. Clearly, we are still living in a world that relies heavily on fossil fuels and no significant progress has been made to reduce our dependence on them. At the current decarbonisation rate, fossil fuels' share of the energy mix has fallen by only 5% in the last 15 years, a ridiculous gain considering the trillions of investment and all the hype around renewable and elctrification. At the current rate of decarbonisation, fossil fuels will account for 55% of the world's energy mix by 2100. See figures 1B and 1C below.
Figure 1B: World primary energy sources in 2024
In 2025, the world will burn significantly more coal, oil and gas than in 2000. Any narrative about an energy transition that we hear is a myth; it's a feel-good story designed to promote a new source of energy. Call it the energy delusion, not the energy transition. Yes, solar and wind energy are growing rapidly, but so are coal, oil and gas, and at a faster pace than low-carbon sources. Coal, oil and gas still account for 80–85% of our total primary energy consumption, the same percentage as 40 years ago.
The progress in reducing the share of fossil fuels in total consumption is ridiculous and completely insignificant, from 85% in 1980 to 81% in 2023. In absolute terms, fossil fuel consumption has actually doubled since 1980. With all the billions invested the last 20 years, with all the COPs and Kyoto Protocols, Copenhague accord and Paris Agreements and other useless conferences, with all the hope and good intentions we have, with all the awareness of CO2 emissions and the effects of climate change over the last decades, almost nothing has changed. Over the last 20 years, $5 trillion has been invested in 'renewable' energy, with the result that the share of fossil fuels in the overall energy mix has fallen from 83% to just 80%. That's insignificant, completely inefficient, if the goal is to decarbonise, 'renewable' energy is a complete failure and a waste of money. "Renewable" energy sources have been added to the mix, while fossil fuels have continued to increase as well. Fossil fuel consumption continues to rise in absolute terms and remains almost constant in relative terms compared to other energy sources. Yes, some other "low carbon" or "clean" energy sources are growing, but fossil fuel consumption is growing even more in absolute terms, simply because the "low carbon" energy sources require an entire ecosystem and supply chain based on fossil fuel consumption.
When you buy water in a a plastic bottle, you are not only buying water, you are also buying plastic. You can't buy water without buying the bottle itself. If the bottle is glass, the glass takes fossil fuel to make, and the extra weight burns a lot more fuel to transport. If the water comes from the tap, you need a metal pipework system. You can't get water without a fossil fuel container of some kind. A world without fossil fuels as the main source of energy is an illusion, totally unrealistic.
3. Newest energy source always more dense than the previous one
On the third point, my message here is that the most energy-dense source of energy we use is oil, followed by natural gas, then coal. I leave out nuclear fission, which would obviously be number one, but nuclear energy requires a massive complex environment (a nuclear power plant) to produce, and it 'only' produces heat and electricity. It cannot be stored or transported as easily as oil. Oil, gas, and to a lesser extent gas, are very convenient for human use because they are storable, transportable, cheap to extract and refine, abundant (at least at the moment for oil) and extremely energy dense compared to wood. Oil and gas consumption has increased so massively since the Second World War that everything around us is made by burning oil, gas or coal. Fossil fuels are everywhere. Wherever you look at a man-made object, it would not exist without fossil fuels. Plastics, fertilisers, concrete, steel, silicon, every man-made object could not be made without fossil fuels.
From wood, to coal, to oil and gas, to nuclear, the latest energy source is always denser, containing more joules per kg. The only exception is "renewable" energy, the sun and the wind. Based on the natural evolution of mankind and the maximum power principle, which suggests that natural selection favours systems that maximise the flow of energy through them, I am sceptical about the addition of the "renewable" source, which is diffuse, material-intensive, land footprint-intensive and intermittent. The future will tell whether "renewables" will be the dominant energy source in 2050, but I have serious doubts.
- Alternatives to fossil fuels
So why don't hydroelectric power, nuclear energy, solar panels, wind farms, and batteries, our "low carbon emission" electricity producers, cut fossil fuel use completely?
One basic explanation is that electricity cannot heat a furnace or smelter to the 600°C to 1800°C needed to process raw materials. Electricity cannot make the raw materials needed for buildings, roads, bridges, for making cars, trucks or excavators, container ships or planes. We are absolutely dependent on fossil fuels for all our raw materials. We have to burn gas or coal to make a solar panel, a wind turbine, a hydroelectric dam, a battery or a nuclear power station. As a result, electricity accounts for only 20% of our total energy consumption, with the rest coming from fossil fuels.
Another explanation is the intermittency of solar and wind farms. When the sun is not shining and/or the wind is not blowing, you need another source of energy to meet demand, even at peak times. That's why, in the US, 40% of electricity still comes from gas-fired power stations, and in Germany, 30% comes from gas and coal-fired power stations. Hydropower is not a suitable baseload compensation solution for most countries: You can't have 30% or more of your electricity coming from hydro, unless you live in a country with low population density and high mountain density, like Norway or Sweden. You could technically have battery storage to cover all your peak hours, but you cannot cover the winter-summer imbalance of solar production with battery storage or water pump storage in terms of scale and volume. And there are many other drawbacks to solar and wind farms, which I will discuss in more detail in the "Renewable Energy" chapter, such as the huge land footprint required, the huge amount of material needed, and the and the final cost to the consumers.
This is why energy sources add to each other, not replace each other, and why fossil fuel sources will always grow along with any other kind of energy. Even if nuclear fusion provided an unlimited amount of energy from tomorrow, we would still need to build the nuclear power plants, the transmission grid, the equipment to run them, and all the electric vehicles, all of which require tonnes of material made from fossil fuels.
Figure 2A below shows what each energy source has produced over the last 60 years and which are the dominant sources.
You can see from the graph in Figure 2A above that there is a huge misconception in most people's minds: There is a huge difference in volume between the 3 fossil fuel sources compared to all other sources, whether we are in 1965 or 1990 or 2022. This rule has not changed in 60 years because it is a law of physics. While wind and solar are growing tremendously and getting a lot of media coverage, people think that they are now changing the equation and are a revolution, a transition. The reality is that they only account for about 5% of all energy sources. Their total output is insignificant compared to the output of oil, gas and coal. Fossil fuels account for about 80% of the world's total energy consumption, whether we are in 1970, 2000 or 2025. Whatever the growth of nuclear, solar, wind and hydro, it is dwarfed by oil, gas and coal. The general media and public conversation focuses on the 20% and pretends it is changing the world, but in reality it is misleading and ignores the 80% of fossil fuel consumption that is growing faster in absolute terms than any low-carbon source.
Why does the world use so much fossil fuel? Simply because fossil fuels give humans the most usable energy for our money, whenever we need it, whereever we need it. Fossil fuels are dense, cheap, easy to transport and store, which makes them the best source of energy for human endeavour and needs. The more fossil fuels a country consumes in terms of total volume, the more economic development, GDP growth, better living standards and prosperity for its citizens.
Looking at per capita consumption, there is a clear and almost perfect correlation between the sum of energy consumed per person and a country's economic output per person, as shown in Figure 2B below. And this correlation holds true for 1970, 2000 and 2025. Notably, there are many African countries in the lower left quadrant.
Even when we consider electricity consumption rather than total energy consumption, there is a strong correlation between electricity consumption per capita and GDP production per capita, as can be seen in Figure 2C below. It is almost a straight line and there are no exceptions: no country consumes a lot of electricity but does not generate GDP. More importantly, there is not a single country that has achieved low electricity consumption and high productivity, as there is not a single country in the red-circled area below:
Looking at the details of fossil fuel energy consumption per capita, you can see in Figure 2D below that oil consumption per person has remained fairly stable over the last 40 years, while coal and gas consumption has increased slightly. And remember that most of the population growth over the last 40 years has come from the developing world, from people who consume much less energy than in Europe or North America. With a slow-growing population in the industrialied world and a fast-growing population in the developing world, if total per capita consumption has risen slightly, it means that per capita consumption in the developed world has actually risen sharply over the past 40 years, offset by low consumption in the developing world. This is not surprising when you compare our living standards today with those of the 1980s.
There are no signs of the consumption of fossil fuels slowing down, and all trajectories point to continued growth in the future.
Some OECD countries claim to have decoupled CO₂ emissions from GDP growth, but this is based on consumption and disregards the carbon footprint of imported goods. This is an accounting trick that makes domestic emissions appear to be declining while downplaying the fact that emissions are rising rapidly elsewhere in the world, as shown on figure 2E below.
Figure 2E: Carbon emissions in rich countries and the rest of the world
When viewed as a whole system, there is no success story of decarbonisation. There is no good news at the global level. The world is a global system and we all depend on each other. Carbon reductions in wealthy nations are irrelevant when global emissions continue to rise overall. National 'decoupling' narratives are comforting, yet dishonest. From 1990 to 2024, carbon emissions and GDP increased in tandem, with a strong correlation of 0.82, as shown on figure 2F below.
Figure 2F: CO2 emissions and GDP have a 0.82 correlation
Three decades of climate policy have not changed this. If global emissions keep rising, emissions falling inside wealthy economies do not matter. Decoupling by country, per dollar of GDP or through clever accounting may be politically useful, but it is biophysically meaningless. What we need now is honesty, not comforting stories.
Western institutions often make three claims: that climate change is real, that economic growth can continue with a decoupled service-based economy, and that existing climate-related policy pathways remain legitimate. The first is true. The second and third are not. Global carbon emissions, GDP, energy consumption and population are closely linked and have increased in tandem over the last five decades, as shown on figure 2G below. There is no evidence that this relationship is changing or that a decoupling is happening.
Figure 2G: GDP, Energy consumption, Carbon emissions and population are tied
As of 2024, fossil fuels still account for 76% of global energy consumption, with nuclear, renewable and hydro sources making up only around 16% of the total (most of the rest is biomass). In 1980, fossil fuels accounted for 84% of total energy consumption. Despite trillions of investment and the illusionary narrative of decoupling and renewable energy, the share of fossil fuel has not even decreased by 10% in 50 years. We are still a fossil fuel-based civilisation and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
- All energy sources work in symbiosis
You would think that wood is an energy source from the past, from the 17th century, and that its consumption has been drastically reduced in the last 50 years, right? Well, you are wrong!
World production of wood has doubled between 1960 and today, from 2 billion tonnes to 4 billion tonnes, half of which is used for construction and half of which is burned for energy. 2.4 billion people depend on wood for cooking and residential heating. Humanity has never used more wood than today. The same goes for coal. There has never really been a transition from wood to coal, then from coal to oil, and now from oil to nuclear and "renewable". We have just piled one source on top of another, and all energy sources are growing. When coal was booming in the UK in the 19th century, we needed wood to support the mine, beam structure to on the roof, wood on which to build the railways, so wood consumption increased with coal consumption. Then came oil in the 19th and 20th centuries. Oil is mainly used for transport, ships, planes, excavators, all of which require steel, which is made from coal. even the oil rigs are made of steel. So coal consumption increased enormously with oil consumption. the same is true with nuclear, solar panels and wind turbines: they require huge amounts of concrete, minerals, materials, aluminium, steel, copper, which have to be mined, processed and refined, which requires both coal and oil. Solar panels addition boost the consumption of coal and gas.
The transition to clean energy electrification in the 21st century is a myth. Yes, we will electrify a little more of our end-use energy, but electrification increases the consumption of oil, gas and coal. It takes 4 tonnes of coal to make a car with an internal combustion engine, and double or triple that to make an EV. The bottom line is that each energy use requires the other. Each increases the demand for the other. They work in symbiosis, they grow together. The idea of eras, the Bronze Age, the steam engine and coal era, the oil era of the 20th century, and now the electrification or "renewable" era of the 21st century, is a myth, a virtual construct in our minds. The belief that a "new" energy will come along and we will get rid of another is completely false.
- Renewable energies, style over substance
There is a lot of press and talk about nuclear, solar and wind, but these 3 make up less than 10% of the total energy supply. So much focus and attention is given to such a small part of the problem that we are led to believe that producing more electricity from solar and wind (and maybe nuclear) is the solution, which is a total misconception. We are delusional. The ability of renewables to decarbonise our economy is completely overblown. Nobody ever talks about copper smelters or steel rolling mills or fertiliser plants, and there are very few public debates about the fuel of the future for container ships or aircraft. Unfortunately, these are the consumers that cannot be fed by "renewable" energy sources, but we hardly talk about them. Why do people only talk about electric cars and rooftop solar panels? It seems these are the superstars that get all the attention, but what about the masses? Most people are simply misinformed and energy-blind.
Let's take a look at the facts and figures that reveal the reality of energy consumption in our world in 2024. This includes the share of each energy source in different regions of the world and the latest additions in the year 2024 compared to 2023, as shown in Figure 3A below.
Figure 3A: Energy consumption and additions in 2024
Figure 3A above shows on the left side the total energy consumption of various energy sources in 2024, broken down by region: the world, Europe, the USA and China. Wherever you look, you will see that between 75% and 85% of our total energy consumption comes from fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal), and that low-carbon energy sources (nuclear, hydropower, wind and solar) account for only a tiny proportion of the total.
Some might claim that this is due to our past legacy infrastructure, but that we are now rapidly deploying these low-carbon sources. However, when we look at the additions in year 2024 compared to year 2023 on the right side, only 36% of the added capacity worldwide was low-carbon, while 64% was fossil fuel. For every one unit of 'green' energy added, almost two units of fossil fuel energy are added. This is the definition of an energy addition, not an energy transition. Wind and solar power are accelerating the pace of energy consumption growth, but they are not replacing fossil fuel consumption.
When you consider China's position, there is a popular narrative that electric vehicle (EV) penetration and decarbonisation are displacing oil, suggesting that peak oil is behind us in China and that China is electrifying and decarbonising fast. This is only partially true. Although oil consumption in China decreased by 1.4% in 2024, this was offset by increased gas and coal consumption. For every unit of oil not consumed in 2024 compared to 2023, mainly due to strong EV adoption, an additional two units of gas and three units of coal were consumed. That's not at all a fossil fuel consumption reduction. The trade-off is not oil for renewable energy, but rather a little bit of oil for more gas, a lot more coal, as well as a lot more renewable energy. China is not reducing its consumption of fossil fuels or decarbonising; it is simply moving strategically away from being one energy source (oil) in a position of geopolitical weakness as a net importer, in order to expand its use of other energy sources (renewable energies and coal) which are locally abundant and cheap, reducing its dependency. This is a purely geopolitical strategic move rather than being driven by climate ambition.
The positive news is that if you look at additions in 2024 in USA, Europe and China, the picture looks better than in the past with about half of new additions being low-carbon sources. Europe subtracted 0.03 EJ of fossil fuel consumption in 2024 and added 0.64 EJ of low-carbon energy. The USA has added 0.15 EJ of fossil fuel energy overall but added 3 times more, 0.49 EJ of low-carbon sources. China added 2.12 EJ of fossil fuel energy overall and a similar amount, 2.10 EJ, of low-carbon sources. The recent trend in these three regions indicates a slowdown in the addition of fossil fuels in the coming decades, but a slowdown in the pace of addition still represents an increase. We will never significantly transition away from fossil fuel sources.
We have spent at least over 5 trillion dollars in industrialied society over the last 20 years to move away from fossil fuels, and as a result solar and wind have gone from 0 to 4% of total energy production. All that money and effort over 20 years for just 4% change: it is failing miserably. Wood burning is about 8% of total energy production, we have not even been able to move beyond this primitive source of energy. To call it a "transition" is a delusion.
If we were to replace all of the world's fossil fuel energy with 'green' energy, including solar, wind, batteries, nuclear, hydro and geothermal, we would be asking for a 20-fold increase in the raw materials to be mined and processed to move away from hydrocarbons. This would take at least a century if it ever happened. It will never happen in 25 years. At best, we will still be getting two-thirds of our energy from hydrocarbons in 2050.
China is building, on average, one new coal-fired power plant a week that will last at least 40 years. Airbus has a 10-year order book for aircrafts that will fly for 25 to 30 years. These are 2 examples that show that we are already certain to be using huge amounts of fossil fuels beyond 2050. Every solar panel or wind turbine installed between 2015 and 2025 will have to be rebuilt and replaced before the 2050 net-zero deadline because of the 25-year lifespan of solar and wind, so all our efforts to date will count for nothing towards our imaginary 2050 net-zero goal. Taking fossil fuels out of the equation, or pretending that we can do without them, or with very little of them, is the recipe for a huge systemic risk in terms of energy security, energy prices and geopolitical stability for non hydrocarbon producing countries like Europe.
An EV contains about 200kg of plastic, which is made from crude oil.
An EV contains about 600kg to 1000kg of steel, which can only be produced on a large scale using natural gas or coal.
A solar panel contains silicon wafers, which have always been made by burning coal. A PV system needs inverters and system monitoring, which contains electronics and microchips. All the microchips in the world are made by burning coal.
A wind turbine, depending on its size and MW output, contains 500 to 1000 tonnes of concrete and 150 to 300 tonnes of steel. Both concrete and steel are produced on a commercial scale only by burning coal or natural gas.
Oil is also used to transport it by container ship and truck, and to assemble it using cranes, excavators and earth movers.
In the US, about 60% of the electricity grid comes from coal or gas-fired power stations, and in Europe about 40%. So when we use electricity, about half of it comes from burning fossil fuels.
One way or another, you cannot avoid burning fossil fuels. All the so-called 'green' electricity technologies are basically only possible by burning fossil fuels.
- Fossil fuel companies the designated scapegoat
In a way, the big oil companies and the talented employees of the companies that extract oil and gas for society should be seen as heroes, but instead society has tagged them as the villainous polluters, the scapegoats for all the damage caused by climate change. This narrative, driven by media and political propaganda in Europe, is completely energy blind.
Why aren't big car manufacturers like Volkswagen and Ford as hated as ExxonMobil or Chevron? Carmakers make the machines that use oil and gas to build and drive, even electric cars. Why is Nvidia loved when the product it sells can only be made by burning fossil fuels and a GPU uses a ton of electricity? Why isn't a steel mill that uses a lot of coal the world's designated climate villain? Why is the CEO of Chevron or TotalEnergies a public enemy of the mainstream media, while the CEO of a solar panel company is seen as a planet saver? It is all nonsense.
If aeroplanes pollute when they fly, who should be blamed? Is it the oil company that produces the jet fuel? Or is it the engine manufacturer or aircraft manufacturer for building machines that consume petrol? Or is it the airline that operates the aircraft? Or is it the tourist or traveller who uses the service? Or is it the airport, which provides the infrastructure to refuel aircraft and facilitate take-off and landing? Is it the government that has allowed this to happen without banning aviation?
As always, there are no clear answers or obvious culprits or villains. We are all part of a system and a society. We are all in it together.
Everything we like, every good and service we enjoy, requires fossil fuels to exist. There is no one group of people or one group of companies to blame and another group to praise. We are all the same: addicted by human nature to the great energy source that is fossil fuel. There are no good guys and bad guys. We are all absolutely the same, we all have a human brain that tilts our decision towards more consumption of affordable goods and services, better standards of living, and this is only possible at scale with the energy dense fossil fuel. Let's admit it, stop hating it. It is a universal reality of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
- Aviation
I personally work in the aviation industry, so this particular field is close to my heart. Aviation accounts for 2.5% of the world's CO2 emissions and fossil fuel consumption, so overall it is not a significant player. Obviously, as part of the decarbonisation trend and also to market itself as 'green', the aeronautic industry is trying to sell a carbon-free future, which is unrealistic and completely hypocritical of the overall feasibility.
I have no doubt that aircraft manufacturers will be able to develop aircraft with electric motors, natural gas motors, hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen internal combustion engines. With some research, investment and time, aircraft manufacturers are perfectly capable of building these flying machines. The problem is that these machines do not have a zero carbon footprint at all, are not 100% green and harmless to the environment, and also the hydrogene infrastructure to fuel the aircraft carrier is an impossible challenge to deploy on a large scale.
Let's take a closer look at Airbus' plan to decarbonise the aviation industry by 2050 in Figure 4A below.
Figure 4A: Aviation path to net zero by 2050
A couple of comments on the chart in Figure 4A above:
Firstly, you can see that the top line is rising, as it has been for the last 30 years. The aviation industry expects the number of passenger-kilometres to continue to rise steadily. Of course, Airbus is not going to advertise and promote "fly less", but if we really want to reduce carbon emissions, is flying for holidays or for regular business trips really a survival necessity? At some point we would have to increase the price of tickets fivefold to make flying an exception if we are really serious about carbon emissions.
You can also see the mention of "frozen efficiency in 2019". Aircraft have only marginally improved their efficiency over the last 40 years, mainly through the redesign of modern engines, gaining 25% efficiency over the last 40 years, but there is no more room for improvement with current technology. Lifting a 100 tonne machine into the air and moving it at 800 km/h is going to consume a lot of energy, one way or another: An aircraft engine consumes about 1 litre of jet fuel per second. Airbus is honest when it claims that we are currently at the limit of fuel efficiency with current technologies.
The light blue area is the replacement of 20 to 35 year old aircraft with new ones that have modern and efficient engines. There's a small gain here, but it's mainly a marketing tactic for Airbus to say "Dear airlines, buy our new planes and you'll save 10% to 15% in fuel efficiency".
The dark blue is the gain expected from disruptive technologies, mainly battery electric and hydrogen powered aircraft.
Battery electric aircraft are only viable for a maximum of 50 passengers and a maximum range of 500 km. You will never be able to fly 200 passengers over 5000 miles across the Atlantic with battery electric aircraft, even with future solid state battery technology. The energy density of oil is simply unbeatable. The only alternative would be a nuclear reactor, which will not happen for obvious reasons.
The best energy density of an electric battery is about 500 Wh per kg, which is 30 times less than the energy density of kerosene jet fuel. This means that the battery of an electric aircraft would be 30 times heavier than the fuel tank to carry the same total energy. and that's why we will never fly commercial aircraft of 100 passengers over 1000km with electric batteries. In addition, batteries discharge in 2 to 6 hours at most, which limits the range of electric aircraft.
One alternative for long range 100+ passenger aircraft is hydrogen powered aircraft. The energy density of hydrogen is so low that in order to store enough energy on the plane, you have to condense the hydrogen and make it liquid at minus 250°C and keep the tank at that low temperature during flight, which presents some technical challenges, but is not impossible to do.
The real catch is, how does the airport infrastructure follow, where does the hydrogen come from, can we produce enough hydrogen economically and on a large scale to power an entire fleet? The answer is a resounding NO, it will not happen.
Airbus vison of an hydrogene powered aircraft
If all the planes at Paris Charles-De-Gaule airport flew on green hydrogen, made from electrolysers and electricity, you would need 4 nuclear power plants running 24/7 just to supply Paris airport! This is not going to happen, so hydrogene will come from burning natural gas, which emits carbon, or will come from renewable sources and will be extremely limited in quantity.
Hydrogen-powered aircraft would simply shift the carbon emissions from burning the fuel in the aircraft to producing the fuel in the first place. Also, hydrogen is the smallest molecule, leaks through pipes much more than oil or gas, and needs to be pressurised to 700 bar to be transported efficiently. Even then, a truck carrying compressed hydrogen would carry 20 times less energy than a truck carrying jet fuel. The logistics of a hydrogen ecosystem are simply inefficient, expensive, uncompetitive and not happening. Flying would simply cost 5 times as much and we would not reduce our overall carbon emissions.
The last point I want to mention here is the green area in Figure 6 called "Sustainable Aviation Fuel" or SAF. Most of the carbon reduction for aviation will have to come from using SAF fuel instead of regular fossil jet fuel (kerosene). The aviation industry admits its own inability to "clean up" the industry by saying that the only way to achieve sustainable aviation is to develop biofuels or synthetic fuels that are net-zero carbon.
SAF are fuels produced from non-fossil sources by capturing carbon from the atmosphere to produce hydrocarbons. The carbon released during the consumption of SAF is carbon that was already in the atmosphere, so it's carbon neutral overall. The 2 big problems with SAF are: It is very energy intensive to produce, making it 2 to 6 times more expensive than current fossil jet fuel, and it is not scalable to meet even 30% of current jet fuel consumption, let alone the expected market growth over the next 20 years, or to meet 80% of demand.
Approximately 80 million gallons of SAF were consumed in 2022, 160 million gallons in 2023, 340 million gallons in 2024 and 710 million gallons are expected in 2025. SAF is a fast growing business. But for comparison, global jet fuel consumption was 95 billion gallons in 2019 and 100 billion gallons in 2023. This means that SAF consumption worldwide in 2023 is only 0.35% of total jet fuel consumption. We would need to increase SAF production to 300 times today's level to cover the entire industry! This is not going to happen any time soon. SAF is currently 2 to 5 times the price of fossil-based kerosene and can only be produced economically with public subsidies. Good luck saving the aviation world, because it will never happen. Large commercial aircraft will always burn fossil fuels to fly.
SAF production facility
SAF's production facilities are huge factories and are by no means carbon neutral. Scaling them up 300-fold is the opposite of net zero. And their energy consumption, even if only from solar and wind, would require massive solar and wind farms. Again, we are talking about a need for a 300-fold increase. A solar farm and a wind farm are not net zero to build, let alone on this massive scale. For comparison, an ICE car running on eFuel needs 4 to 5 times more electricity to produce the eFuel than an electric car needs to charge for the same distance. SAFs are very energy intensive.
What aviation is saying is that if all the wind and solar power in the world today were used to produce just jet fuel, then maybe jet fuel would be carbon neutral, but there would be no renewable energy for anything else, and building these SAF production factories and solar & wind farms is not carbon neutral anyway. By the way, the marine industry, the plastics industry and the steel industry also claim the same ideology, so they all want all the clean electricity in the world for themselves, so it's not going to happen.
To understand the scale of the electricity needed to produce SAF, if Lufthansa were to use only eFuels instead of jet fuel, Lufthansa would need half of Germany's total electricity production just to fuel the aircraft of one airline. Clearly, eFuels will not replace jet fuel any time soon. The aviation's claim of net-zero by 2050 is ridiculous because it only looks at the perimeter of the aircraft and deliberately ignores its vast, complex and energy-intensive infrastructure supply chain.
Fossil jet fuel costs around 60 cents per litre, while SAF costs between 2 and 6 times more, depending on the production process and the price of energy at the SAF production site. The price of SAF will always depend on the price of fossil fuel, so it will always be more expensive than regular fossil jet fuel. People want to fly cheaply and are not prepared to pay a huge premium for their choice of fuel.
SAF are not commercially and technically proven at scale, are not economically viable if produced from low carbon sources, and cannot be scaled up to the levels needed to replace fossil fuels due to their lower energy density.
Rather than develop a hydrogen aircraft, which will never be "green" in its entire supply chain, will never be cost competitive and will never take a large share of the market, I would rather try to develop a natural gas LNG aircraft. Gas engines are a much more established and mastered technology, gas burns cleaner than oil, emits less CO2 and other climate-damaging molecules, natural gas is three times cheaper than oil per unit of energy content, and the world's gas reserves are large enough to provide natural gas as a fuel for the next 150 years. For me, LNG aircraft is the best alternative to jet fuel aircraft. But maybe I am too rational and not idealistic and ethical enough for this (European) world. Oh, LNG is not net-zero carbon, so I guess this strategy would not sell to the public and politicians of this world. This is absurd and completely biased by our ideologies and morals. If the world were more pragmatic, we would have better compromise solutions like LNG aircraft.
Figure 4B: Aircrafts sales projections over the next 20 years
Take a look at the aircraft sales forecast for the next 20 years in Figure 4B above. It is expected that air traffic will double between 2025 and 2045. Over 40,000 new aircraft are expected to be sold in the next 20 years. As an aircraft has a lifespan of 20 to 30 years, it means that in 2060, we will still be flying jet-fuelled aeroplanes. The idea of achieving net zero by 2050 is not realistic. Bear in mind that most of these aircraft burn oil; only 1–5% burn SAF, and SAF cannot be scaled up to cover the entire aviation fleet, let alone half of the global fleet. Furthermore, Airbus has announced that the launch of its hydrogen aircraft has been postponed beyond 2035 and is probably scheduled for 2040 at the earliest. The decarbonisation of the aeronautical industry, including rockets, putting satellites in orbit, and large passenger aircraft, will simply not happen.
Finally, to keep things in perspective, 50% of flights are taken by 1% of the world's population. 80% of people have never been on an airplane. The sustainability of aviation is a problem of the rich, while the majority of people in the world are actually concerned with basic needs such as food or shelter.
- Carbon emissions
The two main drivers of global electrification are decarbonisation and energy security.
Energy security means using the blessings of geology that Mother Nature has blessed you with under your ground. That's oil and gas for the US and Russia, that's hydropower from the mountains and rain in Norway and Brazil, and that's coal in India, China, Poland and Germany. It is about self-sufficiency, independence, sovereignty over one's own energy supply for each country, without exposing oneself to import dependency in case of geopolitical conflict.
Decarbonisation is more a trendy popular desire and a political sell than a real necessity at a national level. Electrifying most of the energy consumed means more electronic devices, more material footprint and land footprint, which means more carbon emissions and pollution to build the machines, solar panels, batteries, transformers, wind turbines and heat pumps of the world. It is one thing to look at, for example, Europe's declining carbon emissions, which have fallen slightly since 2008, and pat ourselves on the back, claim environmental victory and pretend that this is the blueprint for all other countries to follow. But if you look at the carbon footprint, the carbon emitted through the entire supply chain by the average consumption of one person, which is the sum of the emissions released in the country minus the emissions of the manufactured goods exported plus the emissions of the manufactured goods imported, Europe has actually only marginally reduced its carbon emissions by about 15% over the last 20 years. The emissions have simply gone elsewhere, mainly to China and other Asian countries such as Indonesia. 40% of Europe's carbon footprint is imported, i.e. carbon emitted in another country to produce a final good that is imported into Europe for consumption.
Figures 5A and 5B below show the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprints of the EU and China. China has three times more inhabitants, but both regions have the same economic size in terms of GDP. Both countries have the same per capita carbon footprint of around 10 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. Of these 10 tonnes per person, on average a European person imports about 4 tonnes of CO2 while a Chinese person imports only 1.8 tonnes.
Figure 5A: Carbon footprint in China
Decarbonisation is a complete hypocrisy because any gains in one part of the world are only made possible by increases in carbon emissions in another part of the world. In the end, whether the CO2 is emitted in Vietnam or Guatemala, it spreads around the world and affects the climate as a whole, regardless of where it is emitted. And if you look at the world statistics, since 1980, the share of fossil fuel energy has gone from 84% to 80% in 40 years, so we have not decarbonised the world at all, we have not even started to address the problem in any significant way.
If we are serious about decarbonisation and full electrification, as well as transitioning to low-carbon electricity sources such as hydropower, nuclear power, solar power, wind power and batteries, then neither the USA nor Europe will be able to reduce CO₂ emissions significantly. As Figure 5C below shows, electricity consumption has remained largely unchanged in the USA and Europe since 2000. Whatever we do in Europe and the USA, it hardly makes a difference on a global scale. The focus on low-carbon electricity should primarily be placed on China, which has grown tremendously by becoming the world's factory, and on India for the next three decades, followed by Africa in the period 2040–2100. This is where most electrical consumption occurs. As of 2024, around 60% of Chinese electricity production still comes from coal. This means that outsourcing production to China over the last 30 years has been a major contributor to carbon emissions. The implementation of renewables in Europe and the USA has had little impact on reducing emissions due to the significant difference in total consumption.
Figures 5D and 5E below shows that the proportion of electricity produced by coal in China has fallen from around 70% in 2015 to 55% today, despite a significant increase in solar and wind power. During this period, the total amount of electricity consumed increased from 6 to 10 PetaWh, meaning that although the share of coal is reducing, the total absolute quantity of coal consumed for electricity production is expanding.
Figure 5E: Share of chinese electricity generation by source
As China drastically expands its nuclear fleet and grid battery storage, the country could potentially eliminate coal entirely as a source of electricity production in 3 to 4 decades while continuing to invest in intermittent solar and wind power. However, this will take at least three decades and will only solve the problem of low-carbon electricity production, failing to address the even bigger need for coal in industrial and chemical processes.
Since the Industrial Revolution, coal has accounted for 30 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. From an environmental point of view, burning coal is extremely harmful because it releases not only CO2, but also sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and other fine particles, which contribute to respiratory illnesses, smog and acid rain. Coal directly affects both climate change and global warming, as well as having an impact on human health.
However, from an economic perspective, it is extremely cheap and widely available. It can be easily stockpiled and produces intense heat for large-scale chemical and industrial purposes, as well as for steam generation to turn a turbine that produces electricity. The world’s energy needs are growing so quickly that more of everything is required. This includes more renewables, nuclear power and oil, gas and coal. We are not seeing a transition from one source to another, but rather an addition of all sources and an increase in all areas. Coal has so many economic advantages that it trumps all other energy sources in most developing countries.
In 1995, the total global coal consumption was 93.6 exajoules. By 2024, China had almost equalled this figure, consuming 92.2 exajoules. China now accounts for 56% of global consumption, as shown in Figure 5F below. While the Western world debates how many solar panels and wind turbines it should force onto its creaking grids — all of which are made in China by burning coal, a laughable irony — China is busy building its manufacturing might and outcompeting the rest of the world. It is consuming coal at a pace far beyond anything anyone could have imagined 30 years ago when climate hysteria began.
Figure 5F: Coal consumption in China VS rest of the world
The West portrays China as the leader of renewable energy and electrification. While it is true that low-carbon technologies are growing rapidly in China, this "green" growth is overshadowed by the growth of coal consumption in its industry, which is known as the world's factory. Figure 5G below shows that solar energy production growth in China over the last few decades has been insignificant compared to coal energy consumption.
Figure 5G: Growth of coal energy VS solar energy in China
While coal consumption is decreasing all over the world, mostly replaced by gas consumption and deindustrialisation or outsourcing of heavy industries, 2 countries stand out in coal consumption growth: China and India. See figure 5H below. That's because the rest of the world is outsourcing "dirty" heavy industry activities like steel, ciment, fertilizer, chemical and material refining to Asian countries like China, India, Vietnam or Indonesia.
Figure 5H: Growth in coal consumption in Europe, USA, China and India
In reality, for every 1 unit of low-carbon energy (solar, wind or nuclear) added to China's production capacity, around 10 units of coal energy are added. While you may feel optimistic about the future when you only consider the growth in 'renewable' energy, if you take a broader view, the energy transition is a scam, a lie and a propaganda.
China burns roughly half of all the coal burned worldwide. They use coal for most of their electricity production, for chemical and industrial processes, and even to convert coal into diesel and jet fuel for energy security. China has mastered the perfect green energy trap and green illusion: Selling green technologies in which they have dominance and control based on a narrative of a green transition that is a lie and propaganda. Meanwhile, China burns an enormous and growing amount of coal every year to manufacture these technologies for their own sovereignity and energy security but also for the Western world, strengthening their dominance in the supply chain of raw material refining, PV solar panels, wind turbine blades, batteries, and EVs, as shown on figure 5I below.
Figure 5I: China dominates clean energy manufacturing
Another reality is that for every 1 tonne of carbon emissions reduced in Europe or the USA over the last three decades, 1 tonne of carbon emissions have been added in China. Carbon-emitting heavy industries are simply being relocated to countries with more lax environmental policies where production is cheaper and simpler. See Figure 5J below.
Figure 5J: Evolution of carbon emissions in USA and China
China is a master of economic and geopolitical strategy. It is well aware of its energy strengths — such as its dominance in the supply chains for materials and electric devices, its overcapacities in energy-intensive industries and its abundant coal reserves — as well as its weaknesses — such as its dependence on imports for oil and gas — and it exploits these to its advantage. The prevailing climate narrative in the West is highly advantageous for China, but not so much for Europe or the USA, and certainly not for the world. Some claim that China subsidises climate activists and NGOs in the Western world because this strengthens its economic and geopolitical dominance by making the West utterly reliant on China for electrical technologies. Meanwhile, China's coal consumption is increasing at an exponential rate, surpassing the rest of the world combined, demonstrating that it clearly does not care about the climate impact. China is by far the world leader in wind, solar and battery technology, but this might actually be an environmental disguise to strengthen its geopolitical dominance over the rest of the world.
India draws 75% of its electricity from coal, compared to about 60% for China. India aims to reach net zero emissions by 2070 and China by 2060. However, the Indian government's most urgent priority is to raise living standards, connect everyone in the world’s most populous nation to the electricity grid, and transform India into a manufacturing hub that can compete with China. India will need to expand its energy sector to fulfil the nation’s demands. India has the world’s fifth-largest coal reserves, but limited petroleum and natural gas reserves, so it is bound to spend heavily on domestic coal consumption for decades to come. India's coal consumption is expected to rise by 6–7% annually, reaching 1.5 billion tonnes by 2030, and is likely to continue growing rapidly after this date.
The chaos of the pandemic also pushed climate change further down the list of policy priorities for China and the rest of the world. The same thing happened when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, causing oil and gas prices to skyrocket and triggering increases also in coal and electricity prices, making energy very expensive anywhere in the world for a couple of years. Suddenly, energy security, rather than climate goals, became the top priority for governments. Prioritising energy security means boosting domestic energy production in any form and often involves producing more domestic coal. In 2024, China's construction of coal-fired power plants reached its highest level in almost a decade, at about one new coal-fired power plant built per week. The IEA estimates that coal use worldwide will plateau over the next few years, potentially peaking and stabilising between 2027 and 2030, but will not decrease significantly the next 5 years. Who knows what the future holds, or what the priority will be? Spending on the welfare system requires revenue, while spending on defence and the military requires lots of fossil fuels. Maintaining a high level of debt in the economy means increasing production and exports, which consume energy. Idealistic goals of reducing fossil fuel consumption to save the planet will most likely fade against the backdrop of more urgent needs relating to an ageing population and governments with high levels of debt. Chances are that long-term investment financing will probably not be available.
If we look at the entire world in absolute carbon emissions terms, today's 38 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted per year in the world is double the 18 billion tonnes emitted in 1980, and about six times the 6 billion tonnes emitted in 1950, as shown in Figure 6A below. Since 1990, and especially since 2000, carbon emissions have simply been shifted from high-income countries to middle-income countries through industrial outsourcing.
Figure 6A: Carbon emissions per country's wealth
The natural destiny of each country is to grow its economy and living standards in order to achieve solid purchasing power. For low-income countries, the only way to achieve this is to consume more energy. Once a country becomes developed and industrialised, its energy consumption per capita tends to plateau at a high level. This is why rapidly developing countries such as Indonesia, India, Brazil, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East will drive fossil fuel consumption in the coming decades. Unfortunately, the easiest way to build new energy infrastructure is to rely on coal and gas power stations, petrol cars and trucks, and concrete and steel for construction. This is why fossil fuel consumption is increasing worldwide: developing countries aspiring to a more comfortable life are driving demand for fossil fuels. Even if the USA and Europe decarbonise their infrastructure slowly over time, this will have little impact compared to the rapid growth in other developing regions of the world.
Figure 6B: Energy consumption per Capita
If you look at all the climate summits that have been held and considered a 'success', such as the Copenhagen Accord in 2009, the Paris Agreement in 2015 and others, nothing changes at all. Scientists show evidence, politicians show urgency, but in the end everyone wants energy to improve their standard of living and all roads lead to the cheapest and most convenient form of energy to use, which is fossil fuels. All these summits are a waste of time, high level meetings for networking, to look good on a picture and sound good in nice speeches, but it is just a distraction and theatrics with no binding agreement and no real effect on anything.
Look at the chart below, which shows the world's climate summits and COPs, and their impact on CO2 emissions in Figure 6C.
Despite all the awareness, resolutions, summits, scientific warnings, IPCC reports and COPs, emissions have been rising steadily for 50 years. Does anyone really believe in a sudden voluntary trend reversal, a sudden drastic reduction in CO2 emissions to achieve our climate goal? Solar panels and windmills have been around for 15 years and there has been absolutely no slowdown in global warming over the last 15 years, so why should the next 10 or 20 years be any different?
Obviously net zero is all fantasy, a big lie. We all hope and promise and want to believe, but no one is actively changing their lifestyle to change the world. Why should anything consciously change in the next 20 years by some magical miracle? Nothing will change. It's time to be honest with ourselves and stop pretending, stop being hypocrites and delusional.
If the aim of 'renewable' energy such as nuclear, solar or wind was to reduce CO2 emissions, it has failed miserably, as Figure 6F below shows.
Figure 6F: CO2 emissions and share of low carbon sources
As Figure 6F above shows, the contribution of nuclear, hydro, solar and wind energy to the world's total energy mix is very tiny and insignificant. Meanwhile, emissions from fossil fuels have continued to rise over the last century. Even recently, despite claims that renewables are booming and decarbonising the world quickly, the fact is that since 2020, we have added far more fossil fuel energy (38 EJ) than low-carbon sources (22 EJ) to the global energy mix. This has resulted in carbon emissions increasing by about 6% per year over the last 3 years.
Low-carbon sources such as wind, solar, hydro and nuclear power play an insignificant role in the overall energy mix, which is why they have an insignificant impact on the rise in global CO₂ emissions. Despite all the public media praise for 'green renewable energy', the reality is that CO₂ emissions have reached their highest level on record by 2024, with every unit of low-carbon energy adding 1.5 to 2 units of fossil fuel energy.
If we look at the split of primary energy sources between conventional and unconventional oil (mainly US shale oil) in Figure 6G below, we see the same reality that 'renewables' are insignificant in terms of the global trajectory. Natural gas and shale oil are the two energy sources the most growing since 2005, not solar, wind or nuclear.
Figure 6G: Share of unconventional oil compared to other primary sources
From 2000 to 2010, the top two sources of growth in global primary energy were coal, followed by natural gas. Coal was the enabler of China's economic boom in 2000-2020, powering its 'factory of the world'.
From 2010 to 2024, the top two sources of energy growth are natural gas and unconventional oil (fracking/shale oil), mainly in the US. Natural gas is growing, especially in the LNG (liquefied natural gas) segment. Over the past 15 years since 2009, the addition of unconventional oil alone has added more TWh of energy to the world than the sum of wind and solar installed over the same period. And natural gas, pipelines and LNG, has also overtaken unconventional oil over the same period. Wind and solar combined are only number 3 in terms of capacity added, behind natural gas and unconventional oil, over the last 15 years, the period when solar and wind are supposed to be exploding and revolutionising the world.
For all the feel-good stories about the world electrifying and becoming a carbon neutral energy mix, all these stories are lies and do not show the full picture, hiding the reality that for every kWh of wind and solar installed, at least two kWh of fossil fuel energy sources have been installed at the same time.
In the coming decades, the share of hydrocarbons in the overall energy mix will continue to decline slightly, as it has in recent decades. But in absolute terms, we will use more hydrocarbons and more of the other energy sources.
- Electrification
In order to combat climate change, we are being told that everything will be electrified by 2050 and that all energy demands will be met by electricity produced from carbon-free sources. This is a big lie that does not match the data or physical reality.
Firstly, as of 2025, only 22% of the world's energy consumption was electricity. The vast majority (over 70%) comes from fossil fuels such as natural gas, oil and coal, which are used for industrial heating and transportation. Electricity accounts for only a small fraction of our energy needs, and according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), its share of our total global energy consumption is expected to grow from 22% in 2025 to just 35% by 2050. It will never be possible to electrify all our usage and applications, especially in heavy industry and heavy transport (cargo ships, aircraft, steel production, cement production, fertiliser production, chemical production, etc.).
Furthermore, our demand for electricity has actually been declining in most countries for the last 25 years, as shown in Figures 7A and 7B. Figure 7A shows electricity generation per capita per country. Figure 7B considers import and export figures to illustrate electricity consumption per capita and per country. Apart from China, you can see that most countries have either declined or only marginally increased their electricity production and consumption over the last 25 years. There is no ongoing, measurable electrification of our world, as we might assume.
Figure 7A: Electricity generation per capita per country
Figure 7B: Electricity consumption per capita per country
If we focus on the 22% of the world's total energy consumption that is electricity, we can see that, although wind and solar power generation has grown noticeably over the last 10 years, it remains insignificant at 8% and 7% respectively of the total electricity produced in 2024. Even in advanced economies such as Europe, the USA and China, solar and wind combined rarely exceed 25% of total electricity consumption. Coal and natural gas are the two fastest-growing sources of electricity in the world, while hydropower and nuclear power have grown insignificantly.
15% of 22% is 3%, meaning solar and wind account for only 3% of the world's energy consumption today — far from the narrative of an energy transition and electricity revolution that we are led to believe in. We are neither electrifying nor decarbonising the world, and there will be no meaningful changes in the coming decades. We are a fossil fuel-powered civilisation and we will remain so.
Figure 7C shows the absolute growth of world electricity production by source, while Figure 7D shows the relative share of each source in world electricity production.
Figure 7C: Electricity production by source
Figure 7D: Share of electricity production by source
In terms of energy security, there's only one country in the world that can argue that electrification makes sense for energy security, and that's China. China has very few domestic oil and gas resources within its territory, but they can produce locally the raw materials, the batteries, the wind and solar on a large scale locally, the semiconductors, but also the nuclear power plants, the coal power plants, and they have the domestic coal resources but not enough domestic oil and gas. The only dependencies China has are oil and gas, and that's why they're trying to reduce them by turning to domestic coal and electrification of vehicles. China is the country with the largest share of electricity in final energy (useful energy), accounting for 30% of total energy consumption. Their power generation and manufacturing is almost self-sufficient, and whatever minerals China does not have on its own soil, it has ventured into other countries to own the mines in Africa and South America to be almost 100% sovereign from upstream to downstream of the entire supply chain. You cannot say the same thing about Europe or North America. North America has plenty of hydrocarbons, so it makes sense for them to develop and export these resources from an economic perspective. However, they depend on Asia for the processing of raw materials, semiconductors, and electrical technologies. Europe has nothing: neither hydrocarbons nor the materials or manufacturing of electrical devices. It is absolutely dependent on many other regions of the world for food, materials, and energy supplies, as well as software and hardware for electrical technologies.
The idea that we can reach net-zero and be carbon neutral by simply electrifying all our energy demand is grossly misinformed. Electrification requires more materials, more complex and heavier machinery, more infrastructure, and a more complex supply chain that depends on fossil fuels. Ultimately, while electrifying might slow the direct burning of fossil fuels for final usage, it will drive up demand for fossil fuels tremendously across the entire supply chain, infrastructure, and ecosystem of electrical devices.
Take wind turbines, for example: You need a massive quantity of concrete and steel for the tower, plastic (CFRP) for the blades, lubricants, rare earths and metals for the turbine, and transport and assemble to the site via diesel. Wind turbines are heavily dependent on fossil fuels for construction. If we are going to increase the amount of wind energy by 100 times, our fossil fuel consumption will increase tremendously.
Consider solar panels: the silicon wafer required for a solar panel absolutely needs coal to be manufactured. Then there is the aluminium frame, which requires electricity that is not always 100% 'green', and the glass, which requires a gas or coal furnace. Solar panels also require electronic inverters to convert DC to AC current. Since solar parks are spread over many locations, additional power lines and transformers are required on the grid. Power lines are steel structures with copper cables, both of which require gas and coal to produce. Transformers are large, complex machines made of metals and electronics. All electronic from inverters and transformers require semiconductors, the manufacturing and supply chain of which is heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
Then there is the issue of electricity production on the grid. Even if all our activities consumed electricity only, 60% of the world's electricity would still be produced from fossil fuels, meaning that electricity would not be fossil-free. Take China, for example, which is pushing for electrification at a state level for reasons of sovereignty and security. Overall, 60% of Chinese energy comes from coal. Coal is burned on a massive scale for industrial applications and electricity production. Even with wind, solar and battery deployment growing rapidly, coal is still the main source of electricity production in China. Electrification indirectly increases the consumption of fossil fuels.
Over the last 25 years, electricity consumption has actually stagnated or decreased in the richest countries, driven partly by energy efficiency, but largely by vast industrial outsourcing to China. There is a wide range of levels of electrification among countries, depending on factors such as the types of industries, the penetration of electric vehicles (EVs), residential heating technologies and cold climates. Figure 7E below shows that the top 15 countries by GDP have mostly maintained constant electricity consumption per capita over the last 25 years, whereas China has actually multiplied its consumption per person by seven! This is an astonishing and unbelievable figure: To go from a total of 1,300 TWh consumed in 2000 to 10,000 TWh in 2024 in just one generation or 25 years. Bear in mind that 60% of Chinese electricity is still generated by coal, despite massive efforts to ramp up solar, wind and battery power over the last 10 years. Over the next 25 years, however, the trend in most countries is expected to reverse, with electricity consumption per capita predicted to increase by 50% by 2050. This will be driven by EVs penetration, the electrification of things and AI data centres, among other factors.
Figure 7E: Electricity consumption per capita
Some activities are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to decarbonise. Agriculture, steel, cement, plastics, roads and buildings, semiconductors, heavy transport like trucks, ships and aircrafts. Many processes such as steel production, fertiliser production, cement production are energy intensive activities that require a lot of high temperature heat above 1000°C, making fossil fuels the preferred energy source. Replacing fossil fuel sources with electricity sources would put a huge demand on the electricity grid, which is simply not designed for all these activities.
It takes 2kW of electricity and 1 minute to heat a single litre of water to 100°C in your kitchen. Imagine how much electricity you would need to heat a 5 metre diameter furnace to 1500°C for industrial and chemical processes! You would need a nuclear power station just to power a single steel factory, another one for a cement factory, and so on. The energy content of oil, coal and gas cannot simply be replaced by an electricity source. Electricity is great for low-intensity things like electronics and moving parts, but it cannot meet the high-temperature, high-energy needs of chemicals and industrial processes.
Take steel, for example. We consume 1.7 billion tonnes of steel a year, using an estimated 6 MWh of energy per tonne of steel produced. If all the world's steel was produced using electricity as the primary energy source instead of coal, it would require 10,000 TWh of electricity. Compare this with the world's total electricity consumption of 25,000 TWh and you can see that the world would need 40% more electricity just to produce steel in an electric arc furnace, a huge increase in the load on the grid, especially considering that only 40% of the world's electricity today is low carbon, from hydro, nuclear, solar and wind sources. And that's just for steel production, which accounts for 9% of carbon emissions.
Ciment requires 1MWh of total energy per tonne produced, 90% of which is consumed as heat for the chemical reaction. Total world production of ciment is 4.5 billion tonnes. If all the energy needed for its industrial heat came from electricity, we would need 4500 TWh of total electricity, which is about 20% of the world's total electricity consumption in a year. Cement accounts for 8% of total carbon emissions.
In short, just to produce steel and ciment from 100% electrical energy, we would need to increase world electricity production by 60%. And that's assuming that all the extra 60% of electricity is from low-carbon sources (only 40% of electricity produced today is low-carbon). And that would only decarbonise 17% of the world's current carbon emissions, leaving us with 83% of the job still to do. The scale of the task to electrify everything is so massive it is utterly impossible. Just to build an electricity grid with production sources, transmission, transformers and distribution would take a century, if it were ever possible.
From mining quartz rock to producing silicon, then polysilicon, and then silicon wafers, each step in the processing chain requires high technology that is mastered by only a handful of companies and carried out at only a few locations. These are energy-intensive industrial processes that require furnaces to reach 1000°C (powered by coal, gas or high-power electricity from gas and coal) and produce dirty, polluting chemical waste along the way. This is necessary in order to obtain ultra-pure silicon with a specific atomic arrangement that can be used in solar panels and top semiconductor chips. Those who claim that solar energy is the solution to achieving a net zero world and that digitalisation is the future, citing examples such as AI, smart grids, the electrification of everyday items, data centers, electric vehicles, smartphones, cryptocurrency, laptops, home office jobs and robots, are simply ignorant and have no idea how computers, data centers and solar panels are manufactured. People artificially convince themselves that there are solutions; they want to believe in an imaginary world in which clean manufacturing processes are powered by clean energy sources, just to make themselves feel better about saving the planet, their lifestyle and the future of humanity. But people are simply lying to themselves out of ignorance and believing in a fake, pink illusion due to misinformation that has no tangible reality.
It is commonly believed that technological innovation and improvements in efficiency will reduce our energy consumption. However, this is a myth for two reasons.
Firstly, the rebound effect, also known as Jeavon's paradox, occurs when a machine or technology becomes more efficient, consuming less energy per unit of output. This makes the product more appealing to the public, who then buy more of it. Consequently, the cumulative total consumption actually increases, despite each unit being more energy efficient. Two good examples of Jeavon's paradox are semiconductors and cars. The processing speed of semiconductors doubles approximately every four years, but applications such as Bitcoin mining, high-definition video and 3D design require ever greater computing power. Ultimately, energy consumption per unit of computing power has reduced drastically, but our computers and smartphones perform far more calculations per second, so total consumption does not decrease. Now, almost everyone has a smartphone and a dozen electrical appliances at home. The other example is combustion engine cars. Cars used to consume around 7 litres per 100 km 50 years ago. Today's motors are much more efficient. However, because cars are much bigger and heavier and have plenty of features like air conditioning, today's cars also consume around 7 litres of diesel per 100 km. Total consumption has increased because nowadays in industrial countries, almost every adult owns a car (or maybe two), whereas in 1970, cars had not yet been widely adopted by the general population. Although a car in 2025 is far more efficient and technologically advanced than one in 1970, the total petrol consumption for cars is much higher because there are more cars and we drive greater distances.
A second reason why energy consumption has not reduced over the last few decades is that improvements in energy efficiency are marginal for many heavy industries. We are familiar with Moore's law, which states that the number of transistors in microprocessors doubles every two years. However, semiconductors are the exception. The rule is that energy-intensive industries make hardly any progress in reducing their energy consumption. As shown below in figure 7F, the annual rate of energy efficiency has hardly changed for cement, steel, steam turbines or aircraft over the last century.
Figure 7F: Moore's law not applicable in energy efficiency
As we need more heavy industry to renew infrastructure in industrialised countries and to build new infrastructure in developing countries, the demand for fossil fuels per capita will continue to grow in the coming decade.
According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the energy 'transition' would require around 20% of the global economy each year for the next 50 years. The likelihood of this occurring is almost non-existent. No country would ever spend 20% of its GDP on the 'energy transition' when it must first prioritise spending on pensions, healthcare, the military, education and debt servicing. There is simply not enough room for anything more than 3% of GDP.
For comparison, the 'Manhattan Project', the top-secret US research programme focused on building the first atomic bomb during World War II, cost about 33 billion US dollars in today's money. Project Apollo, the NASA programme that successfully landed humans on the Moon in 1969, cost about 207 billion US dollars in today's money. The estimated cost of the global energy transition from 2020 to 2050 is 275,000 billion US dollars, equivalent to 2.7 years of today's world GDP. This is an absolutely daunting and impossible cost that no government or private business is ready to bear without guaranteed returns on investment. The energy transition mostly involves risks linked to climate change and offers few economic opportunities.
Aiming for net zero in 2050 is, in my view, the wrong approach because it is an unattainable goal. It creates a regulatory environment and incentive system that is completely inefficient and dangerous for our energy security and economic prosperity. Investing in reducing carbon emissions is mostly a waste of money. I am not saying that spending on "renewable" energy is stupid. It does add cheap, emission-free electricity to the grid when the weather is good. I am saying that developing "renewable" energy for the sake of reducing carbon emissions is counterproductive and totally ineffective. Instead, we should focus and invest in the adaptation and resilience of our societies.
The working-age population is set to explode in India and sub-Saharan Africa over the next 50 years, while it will shrink or at best stabilise in most of the industrialised world, home to the world's biggest extractive multinationals such as Rio Tinto, BHP, Exxon Mobile or Total Energies. The relevant question is whether sub-Saharan Africa will decarbonise its economy in the booming economic growth of the coming decades. It is important to note that multinational companies that invest in overseas projects in developing countries do so for resources that they can export to the world: oil, gas, coal, metals, minerals, gold, and so on. Usually there is a win-win agreement between these big companies and the local government through negotiation or bribery that allows the multinationals to set up in the developed countries to build new infrastructure to extract and exploit the exportable resource because the company can sell it to the world. When we talk about 'renewable' energy and solar farms, windmills and grid batteries, this infrastructure produces electricity that can only be consumed locally and not exported around the world. Electrical infrastructure only benefits local people, it does not benefit the whole world through economic trade and exports. Foreign multinationals don't go to a developed country to build a local electrical grid, because they have no interest or benefit from it. That's why no major multinational is setting up "renewable" projects abroad in developing countries. Such projects have to come from the local government, from public money or from the national resource extraction company, and in developing countries there is usually insufficient public money for "green" electrical infrastructure projects, and there is no national company with the skills, size and know-how to develop this infrastructure. This is why densely populated but developing regions such as Indonesia, Nigeria, India and the whole of sub-Saharan Africa have not electrified their economies at all, and what little electricity they do have is still largely generated from fossil fuels. I do not expect this effect and trend to change any time soon, and if in 50 years 80% of the world's working population is in India or sub-Saharan Africa, that workforce will have a predominantly fossil fuel based economy, so the overall share of fossil fuels in total energy consumption will remain around 80%. Unfortunately, electrification of the economy and growth based on "renewables" is only possible in rich countries that already have a large economy with revenues and taxes that can be spent on public electrical infrastructure. A country has to be rich before it can electrify its economy, because electrical infrastructure requires a lot of public money and a lot of time.
Take a look at the International Energy Agency's (IEA) projections of future world energy consumption in Figure 7G below.
Figure 7G: IEA forecast of energy consumption until 2050
The picture in Figure 7G above seems quite realistic to me: Overall, a slight increase in total energy consumption from 2024 to 2050, slower than in the last 20 years, because the population will not grow as much in the next 25 years, especially in the industrialised countries, which consume a lot of energy per capita. We are likely to continue on the same per capita trend until the middle of the century. Oil consumption is expected to peak by 2030 and then remain stable, which makes sense if we electrify transport. Coal consumption will decline slightly, mainly replaced by natural gas for industrial and residential heating.
Electrification accounts for most of the growth in total energy consumption. Nevertheless, the share of electricity in total energy consumption rises from 17% in 2010 to 21% in 2023 and only to 32% in 2050. 32% is a long way from 100%. We are not going to electrify all the world's activities, let alone produce all that electricity fossil-free. The IEA predicts that we will still be using about the same amount of fossil fuels in 2050 as in 2024, and that sounds very plausible. Net-zero in 2050 is stupidly unrealistic and an idiotic prediction or target. The IEA is not predicting a decline in fossil fuel use, but rather a stabilisation of fossil fuel use combined with an increase in electricity use. This seems realistic because many of the key pillars of our civilisation (concrete, steel, fertilisers, plastics and semiconductors) cannot be produced on a large scale without fossil fuels, nor can heavy transport such as cargo ships and aircraft, nor industrial heat applications.
Simply put, fossil fuels are not going away because they offer the best package of energy density, cheap, abundant and convenient to transport and store.
Since our overall world energy mix will always be dominated by fossil fuels, the only solution to our carbon emissions and global warming is to reduce our overall energy consumption, whatever the source mix, and get back to what we were consuming in the 1960s or 1970s. But that would be absolutely impossible today because the population has doubled since then, because debt has exploded at all levels, personal, household and government, and because we are now facing a labour shortage due to the poor demographics of the last 40 years.
There is no going back to the Beatles.
- Conclusions
A transition means moving from one technology or social practice to another.
There have only been 2 transitions in the history of Homo sapiens:
1. Centuries ago, humans moved from hunter-gatherer, hunting living animals for meat and gathering fruits and seeds, to agriculture and the domestication of land and animals. Humans went from being dependent on what the earth would randomly offer in terms of food to controlling what food will grow on purpose for human benefit. This development has tremendously increased the availability of food and therefore the survival rate of humans.
2. The discovery of fossil fuels, in the 18th century with coal, then in the late 19th century with oil and in the 20th century with natural gas. This enabled us to move away from child labour, moved people from the fields to factories, from villages to cities, moved away from domestic animal labour and more importantly, marked the end of human slavery, replaced by powered machines doing the physical work for humankind benefit. This has multiplied human muscles equivalent mechanical powered by a factor of 200 and given us all the comfort and abundance of goods and services to society without using much human physical effort and struggle, skyrocketing productivity and living standards.
To renounce fossil fuels on moral grounds, now that we have achieved an overabundance of cheap comfort, would be to give up the super-powered machines that make our lives easy. It would basically take us back to the Middle Ages, seriously. Replacing fossil fuel energy with 'clean' electricity would mean a 20-fold increase in electricity demand. It would take generations, a century, to achieve and would put enormous pressure on material availability and would not satisfy our civilisation's need for electricity to be available 24/7. Getting rid of fossil fuels altogether is also a fantasy, because nobody wants to go back to the lifestyle of 300 years ago. People love the comfort and ease of today's life.
Renewables cannot sustain our current civilization. This is not a matter of opinion or preference; it’s what the data consistently shows. While renewables have the potential to supply a significant portion of our electric power and can help displace coal, the worst carbon emitter, that scenario is far from the reality we face.
The current energy substitution approach has failed to achieve meaningful reductions in global emissions, primarily due to an unrealistic overestimation of renewable energy’s potential impact. This failure is compounded by the absence of a contingency plan for when renewables fall short. The intermittency problem will never be solved by low-carbon, long-term solutions.
Fossil fuels cannot be replaced. No matter what we do, we are simply shifting their usage around. This includes moving their usage from the operation of the end product to its manufacture, from the consumption of the end user downstream to the manufacturing and supply chain upstream, from simple products to complex products requiring more raw materials, more tooling and more infrastructure, from final useful energy to primary energy, and from operation to maintenance and infrastructure. It also includes geographycaly moving the usage, from the country of the final consumer to the countries producing the raw materials and carrying out the assembly.
If one step in a process, activity or machine is claimed to be 'green' and low carbon, this means that other steps in the process or activities are more carbon intensive. It is a lure and an illusion to look only at one part and claim 'we have a low-carbon solution' without considering the entire life cycle of the product or activity. Consider EVs, solar panels, 'green' hydrogen, carbon capture, batteries or any other technology: if you consider the entire supply chain, including manufacturing, installation, dismantling, operations, maintenance and infrastructure, any reductions in fossil fuel usage are offset by increased usage elsewhere. The steady and constant growth in total global fossil fuel consumption each year (excluding 2008 and 2020, the years of the global crisis) proves this.
Pretending that we will reduce our per-person fossil fuel consumption in the future is like pretending that we can fly a rocket to the moon using only batteries and electricity. That would be foolish and ignore the fact that combustion power is probably 100 times denser than electrical power. The same goes for the scale of industrial heat energy required for industrial processes such as metal refining, steel production, cement production, fertiliser production and the chemical industry, as well as rotating the massive turbines of power plants, which can only be provided at scale by energy-dense fossil fuels. Any form of low-carbon electrical generation (wind, solar, geothermal) or battery storage that we have had in the last 40 years, and will have in the next 20 years, represents just a few percentage points of the total energy produced and consumed. These energies are adding slightly to fossil fuel energy, but they are not making a significant impact or bringing us any where close to an 'energy transition' or 'electric revolution'.
The real solution lies in drastically reducing overall energy consumption, and that means drastically reducing overall consumption, which means deliberately giving up comfort, privileges and a solid standard of living for a simple, minimalist and rudimentary lifestyle. But that's not going to happen, even if a global consensus were to say it was the right thing to do. The two reasons are simple: There is no international coordinating mechanism to plan and enforce such a sweeping change, and most people are not willing to give up their comfort to save an imaginary future of humanity or the Earth.
The history of the last 150 years has shown that the use of fossil fuels has not disappeared, not even been reduced, but has increased dramatically. There has never been a transition to something else, only an addition of energy sources, and most energy sources keep growing when a new one is added. To bet against fossil fuels in the future, by human beings voluntarily (not forced by natural depletion) abandoning them, is to bet against human laws. There will be no voluntary transition, only a suffered reduction in long-term availability due to depletion of a finite stock, if it ever happens, and that scenario is unlikely: The availability of materials is only limited by the energy used, fossil fuels are abundant for the next 100 years, and by then there may be only 2 billion people on the planet, so energy availability in 2100 is the last of our concerns.
Throughout history, a technology or product usually dies out when something better comes along: Wood-burning replaced by coal. Coal burning was replaced by oil and gas. Mobile phones replaced landlines. Internal combustion engine cars replaced horse-drawn carriages. Concrete buildings replace wooden ones.
Disruptive energy changes will happen when we find something better than oil and gas, better than diesel and jet fuel, better than concrete and plastics. Otherwise it is just a new technology that adds to the existing ones without dramatically changing the landscape. Solar and wind, because of their intermittency, large footprint and low density, are not, all things considered, a better alternative to fossil fuels. Nuclear might be, but the up-front costs, the skills and expertise required, the time it takes to build, make it less attractive in today's rapidly changing context.
We need to end the pointless debates about an energy transition that isn't based on reality. We should stop deluding ourselves with arguments about possible solutions. The only effective course of action is to reduce overall energy consumption. We must abandon the false hope that governments will step in to solve the problem. Their track record shows that they won't.
Both views carry a kind of naïve optimism, assuming that the system will self-correct despite clear evidence to the contrary. This human-centered thinking assumes that what’s good for us is good for the planet, but the reality couldn’t be more different. The evidence shows that this false belief is steering us and living systems in the wrong direction.
Despite public perception, the oil industry take climate change seriously. But climate change isn’t the core issue. Overshoot is. We’re using resources faster than nature can regenerate and polluting beyond what it can absorb, eroding the foundation of our survival.
Below a quote from Bill Rees to conclude:
<< Humanity is in overshoot. Global heating, plunging biodiversity, soil/land degradation, tropical deforestation, ocean acidification, fossil fuel and mineral depletion, the pollution of everything, etc., are indicative of the increasing disordering of the biosphere/ecosphere. We are at risk of a chaotic break down of essential life-support functions. >>
We keep talking about an 'energy transition', yet the world still runs on oil, gas and coal. Most of the things that keep civilisation functioning — steel, plastic, concrete, shipping, fertiliser, bitumen, industrial heat and chemicals — cannot be produced without them. Vaclav Smil's key message in his 2021 book 'Numbers Don't Lie' is to stop peddling fairy tales, examine the facts and statistics, and accept that fossil fuels are here to stay. In the grand scheme of things, 'renewable' energy sources are insignificant.
The numbers in Figure 8A bellow don't lie. Where is the 'transition' to be seen? What impact do nuclear, solar and wind energy have on our total energy consumption growth? And where is the decline in fossil fuel consumption as we are supposed to substitute fossil fuels for 'renewable' energy?
Figure 8A: Consumption of fossil fuels versus consumption of low-carbon sources
Let's stop arguing and start being honest about our situation. We can’t take meaningful action until we admit that we are addicted to fossil fuels and that neither our willingness to change things nor the available technology and progress is making the slightest dent in fossil fuel consumption. There are no easy solutions, such as renewable energy. Let's stop wasting time on things that won't or can't happen. We love having more comfort, a better lifestyle and more convenience, and therefore love consuming more fossil fuels. End of story. Unless, of course, we all voluntarily and proactively shift towards restrictions, minimalism, loss of purchasing power, sufficiency and poverty – which is not going to happen any time soon.
Net-zero, carbon neutral, 'renewable' energy and energy transitions are just fancy words to soothe our minds, eliminate stress and eco-fear, and trick our brains into thinking we have a solution. It makes people feel better about their lifestyle and daily consumption. It is a white lie you tell yourself, similar to when a 90-year-old grandmother is diagnosed with advanced cancer and you simply tell her "the doctor said you are fine, you will be back home next week".
I guess one of the greatest human traits is storytelling.
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- THE LAST DECADE -
December 2025
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