Environment & Energy

I have in my electronic files almost every issue of the World Energy Outlook, and each year I use the data tables (which also contain soothsaying) for the most current issue in my posts. Here's this year's:



World Energy Outlook 2024

Table A.1a: World energy supply Page 296, showing the primary energy available as of 2023 compared to 2022.

I can and do reproduce this table as often as required to confront ignorance.

I would not be surprised to hear someone claim that 8 + 8 is greater than 30. The first 8 is the amount of energy produced at a trillion dollar cost for solar energy, the second 8 for wind, (which grew by zero percent between 2022 and 2023), and the thirty is what nuclear energy has been producing in an atmosphere of mindless vituperation for roughly three decades, saving lives and about two years worth of annual dumping dumping of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

The WEO "scenarios" if one looks back over the decades are both disturbing and amusing.

I agree that antinuke ignorance has prevented nuclear from doing what it might have done, but whatever humanity does going forward, albeit clearly too little, too late, can at least slow the growth of dependence of fossil fuels.