Finally, a SmartPlanet column that states the facts. Most of the growth in carbon emissions in the coming years will not be in America, where in fact it is falling to levels not seen since the early 1990s because cheap natural gas from fracking is replacing coal in electricity generation. This was happening even before the EPA got on the bandwagon and essentially outlawed new coal power plants.
The only problem I have with the article is that in the US the "subsidies" oil, gas, and coal receive are largely the same kinds of "subsidies" every business gets in the form of capital depreciation allowances. In renewables, it comes in the form of the government making wild bets on companies such as Solyndra and A123. And the conventional energy industry is many times larger the renewable energy industry. If you look at subsidies per unit of power produced, renewables receive much larger subsidies than conventional energy.
This doesn't mean that America and the world is awash in an infinite supply of oil and natural gas. In fact, the projection is that America will lead Saudi Arabia in oil production for only a short while. What it does mean is that we have time to come up with alternatives that are finally economically justifiable, and time to implement them. In particular, we need to come up with cheap energy storage for renewable technologies that produce power in unpredictable amounts.
The United States is poised to overtake Saudi Arabia to become the largest global oil producer by the end of the decade, the International Energy Agency said.
The rebound in U.S. oil and gas production, driven by technologies that are unlocking tight oil and shale gas resources, coupled with new fuel-efficiency measures will reduce oil imports, said the IEA in its annual World Energy Outlook.
The U.S. has always been a major producer of oil. But the United States’ appetite for crude far exceeds what it can produce domestically, which requires it to import around 20 percent of its total energy needs from Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and other oil-exporting nations. Crude imports to the U.S. fell 11 percent this year.
If the IEA’s projections play out, the U.S., the world’s biggest fuel consumer, could get close to energy independence. The IEA also projects North America will become a net oil exporter around 2030, a development that would accelerate a shift in the international oil trade towards Asia.
Other highlights from the World Annual Outlook:
- Global energy demand grows by more than one-third through 2035, with China, India and the Middle East accounting for 60 percent of the increase;
- Energy demand barely rises in OECD countries (primarily Western countries which rely on imports from oil-exporting nations), although there is a pronounced shift away from coal, oil and in some countries, nuclear;
- Fossil fuels remain dominant in the global energy mix, supported by subsidies that reached $523 billion in 2011, up nearly 30 percent from 2010 and six times more than subsidies for renewable energy;
- Fossil fuel subsidies remain most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa.
Photo: Flickr user Paul Lowry, CC 2.0
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