England could produce 13 times more renewable energy

[Adokforme]

China seems to have it by the bucket load.

But then again other than coal I'm not sure what reserves they may have of the dreaded black liquid gold?

They are 14th position just behind Qatar for oil reserves.
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-r ... e_vignette

And 6th in terms of oil production just behind Iraq.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... production

Thanks for that Nowty. If my schoolboy sums are correct then approx 9 x the reserves of the UK but with approx 23 x the population. So per head of population about two and a half times less than here.
At the rate of consumption then by known reserves in 2016 sufficient for approx 16 years or 2032. Don't know if that is anywhere near but applying the same sums to the UK I believe our reserves would run out in 2027!
Of course my calcs may be out by a decimal place or two.

[nowty]

China does import a hell of a lot of oil too.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 024-01-12/

11+ million barrels per day

[Mart]

China seems to have it by the bucket load.

But then again other than coal I'm not sure what reserves they may have of the dreaded black liquid gold?

They are 14th position just behind Qatar for oil reserves.
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-r ... e_vignette

And 6th in terms of oil production just behind Iraq.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... production

Thanks for that Nowty. If my schoolboy sums are correct then approx 9 x the reserves of the UK but with approx 23 x the population. So per head of population about two and a half times less than here.
At the rate of consumption then by known reserves in 2016 sufficient for approx 16 years or 2032. Don't know if that is anywhere near but applying the same sums to the UK I believe our reserves would run out in 2027!
Of course my calcs may be out by a decimal place or two.

Always need to take China data with a pinch of salt, but they were hoping to reach 'peak oil' consumption in 2023. I don't know if they did (doesn't look like it), but the rapid shift to EV's for road transport, and the transition already of 100's of thousands of buses, is helping. If they pull that one off by/before mid decade, it will be quite impressive.

[Mart]

They are 14th position just behind Qatar for oil reserves.
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-r ... e_vignette

And 6th in terms of oil production just behind Iraq.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... production

Thanks for that Nowty. If my schoolboy sums are correct then approx 9 x the reserves of the UK but with approx 23 x the population. So per head of population about two and a half times less than here.
At the rate of consumption then by known reserves in 2016 sufficient for approx 16 years or 2032. Don't know if that is anywhere near but applying the same sums to the UK I believe our reserves would run out in 2027!
Of course my calcs may be out by a decimal place or two.

Always need to take China data with a pinch of salt, but they were hoping to reach 'peak oil' consumption in 2023. I don't know if they did (doesn't look like it), but the rapid shift to EV's for road transport, and the transition already of 100's of thousands of buses, is helping. If they pull that one off by/before mid decade, it will be quite impressive.

Just an update on my comment, as it seems China's imports of oil have set a new record, so, so much for peak last year.

However, the comments are interesting, suggesting stockpiling of oil, and an increase in producing some petro-chem products like textiles. So increased imports aren't necessarily the same as increased consumption, but I'd assume that it's doubtful that oil consumption peaked in 2023. But with BEV + PHEV sales increasing and approaching 50%, maybe 2024 is the year, or at least very close?

I think the graph trend line is promising(?) compared to the growth up until 2020,especially for a country transitioning to an ever higher level of 'middle class', with greater ownership of goods like motor vehicles. However, the jump from 2021 and 2022 is a little unnerving.

Bad News: Record Oil Imports into China in 2023

[nowty]

I plotted this graph using the top GDP countries or economic areas.

Only China, the rest of Asia and India (from a lower base) are increasing their greenhouse emissions. But I cannot see the rest of us reducing as much as we need to, we look pretty much flat. The UK might be doing well with leccy generation but we are still too reliant on mains gas for heating and the rollout of insulation and heatpumps is too slow. In order to meet the 1.5 degree net zero by 2050 then the world emissions need to drop to around 30Gt by 2030 and zero by 2050.

I think more likely the world will flat line to 2030 and maybe drop to 30 or 40 Gt by 2050 which probably means a much higher climate temp.

I have annotated the world line to show the trajectory the world needs to follow but so far I see no evidence of such radical world reductions to limit world temp increases to 1.5 degrees.
https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions



This shows the current world policies changing nothing.
https://www.wri.org/insights/net-zero-g ... s-answered

[Ken]

I oscillate between 50% it can be done and 50% it cannot. I think there are a few unknown parts to the jigsaw.

I believe we COULD technically do it with what we know to day but think about what could /might happen in the next 26yrs. 10yrs ago PV and wind was 10X the cost and coal was polluting. If we can produce clean leccy then why cannot we just heat our houses, drive our cars and power everything else with clean leccy.

I believe we can afford to swap out our polluting ways particularly if we just replace the dirty old with clean new which is in effect what has happened to coal.

So we are left with the real problem which is there the will of the various countries to do it. Most of the world has ample space for RE and therefore on a world basis some countries will produce too much and others too little.

I believe that we can power all our transport, EVs, off the waste and power used by the FF industry. eg Around 140 bcm of natural gas is flared globally each year. Thats twice what the UK uses in a year! This is a major source of CO2 emissions, methane and black soot, and is damaging to health. The rate of return on energy in the oil and gas industry is about 1 to 6 avg. If it gets to 1 to 4 then because of EVs being 4X more efficient then we might as well just leave the oil and gas in the ground and go for cheaper energy solutions.

[Mart]

Thanks Ken, eye-opening context.

I'm always heartened by the reports from Mark Jacobson at Stanford University. We have the solutions today, and they are cost-effective / cost-competitive. So the improvements over the next 26yrs add much more excitement, if we'll just get on with it, a tad faster.