One question is nagging at the back of our minds: why are our leaders setting policy targets that are impossible to achieve? Such is the case with zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Nothing is demonstrating that this is feasible, and yet numerous studies of convenience dare not point out this major drawback.

Even the toughest climate sceptics don’t deny that it would be a good thing if the world no longer had to depend on fossil fuels to power its activities. Although still abundant, resources are finite and geopolitical pressures are forcing us into abhorrent submissions. The clamour of a climate emergency also demands that we make it a priority.

Once again, and one too many times, I have been able to analyse the latest energy data for the world from my own angles [1]. First of all, I had to correct a serious error made by the Energy Institute, which it took over from BP, who previously published these statistics. Without going into detail here, the share of fossil fuels in the global energy mix is close to 89%, not 82% as the Institute would have us believe. This makes the challenge of decarbonisation all the greater.   

The diagram shown in the title of this article [2] says it all: dependency is high and falling at an average rate of 0.27% every year. A simple division suggests that, at the current rate, it would take 330 years to reach zero. This is, of course, absurd!

But the absurdity is not where we think it is, because if there has been an acceleration in this pace, it has been minimal and has been undermined by major contributors – China, the USA, Canada, Germany, the UK, Italy, and South Africa. Even if we want to, it’s not easy to accelerate the pace because three resources are scarce: industrial capacities, brains and financial means. It’s not a “just do it” case, this voluntarism remains a paper tiger.

There are other barriers too. Demographics are still growing – by 1% a year, except in Japan and Russia – even if they slow down as societies become wealthier, which is then accompanied by the ageing of the population.

Nor is economic growth such (2.3% per year) that we can distribute all its dividends to the energy sector alone, even in the most affluent countries. Gone are the years when China was blinding prospects with double-digit growth rates. And yet, strong growth is what would be needed to finance these pharaonic works, if ever the pharaohs ordered their construction so that they would be useful for something other than today’s Egyptian Ministry of Tourism.

To make a transition, there is a period during which current resources must be used to develop the new ones. Otherwise, the transition will never take place. This period is longer than a video game reset. The inertia of a system is not a sign of ill will, but of its size, which must be taken into account [3] .

The energy review shows that 60% of the growth in consumption still must be based on fossil fuels. This is not a scandal caused by lobbies, but a paradox that the fake ingenues of Gaia and the climate Ulama are unable to hear: the more solar panels or windmills are manufactured, the more fossil fuels are used, and even more than the average, because the countries where the components for these devices are manufactured are not those that are at the forefront of so-called renewables.

What can’t be paid for is not a problem, they will say. All you have to do is not to consume, and therefore not to have to pay for anything. Or you can simply tax the rich. Or fossil fuels should be taxed to pay for the other ones. The trouble with these proposals is that they only work in the parlours of the irresponsible morons who put them forward. Of course, euphemisms will reduce the effects of a hefty bill that will nevertheless have to be paid, clever accounting will exclude subsidies from the debts to be paid, and we’ll talk about sobriety rather than rationing while appointing neighbourhood soviets or other artificial nonsense to conduct the inquisition of behaviour. None of this will make the goal attainable in thirty years, or even three centuries. And that goal: is it worth it?

When the general had to be told that his horse wasn’t ready, he replied straight away and with good sense that he would go on foot. Generals, for their part, know how to deal with reality, because they know the dreadful consequences of obstinacy.

What is absurd and needs to be corrected is the goal that was set. Not so much to reduce emissions, but to pretend to achieve this by 2050. At the end of the day, our great-grandchildren who will be in charge at the turn of the century will have to come to terms with a changed climate, a challenge in itself, but also continue to reduce the use of fossil fuels, a constructive task. And if the tally hasn’t reached its end, it will mean that this blog post wasn’t too wrong.

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[1]     See my version for 2022 “Energy, turning point or continuity?”

[2]     X-axis: the current share of fossil fuels in the country’s or region’s energy mix [%].
Y-axis: the average annual rate at which this share has fallen over the last five years [%/a].
The area of the discs is proportional to the amount of primary energy consumed in the region or country.

[3]     For example: a modern 1650 MWe EPR reactor will supply around 12.3 TWh per year. To replace the electricity generated by fossil fuels in 2022 (17,677 TWh) over 27 years (655 TWh each year), one of these reactors would have to be commissioned somewhere in the world every week. There are currently 55 reactors under construction, which will produce 455 TWh per year and should be commissioned by 2030. That’s not nearly enough!
Furthermore, that’s only a third of the problem, because the use of fossil fuels in transport, heating and other industrial processes will still have to be replaced.

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