![]() ![]() For those interested in energy accounting methods, at the end of this post we look at comparisons of direct versus substitution methods. Here we take primary energy based on the ‘substitution method’ for energy accounting.4īefore we look at the numbers, there are two points to note: In the chart here we see the breakdown of global primary energy consumption for 2019. How big is this challenge? How much of our energy currently comes from low-carbon sources? 3 To reduce global emissions we need to shift our energy systems away from fossil fuels to low-carbon sources of energy. The speed and scale of the energy transition we need today in switching from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy is therefore a new challenge, very different from the past.Īround three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels for energy. What Vaclav Smil – and other researchers studying these long-term energy transitions across countries – highlights in his work is the slow rate at which energy transitions have occurred in the past. What are often referred to as ‘modern renewables’ – solar and wind – were only added much later, in the 1980s. It wasn’t until the 1960s that nuclear energy was added to the mix. But with the Industrial Revolution came the rise of coal followed by oil, gas and by the turn of the 20th century, hydropower. We see that until the mid-19th century, traditional biomass – the burning of solid fuels such as wood, crop waste, or charcoal – was the dominant source of energy used across the world. 1 Data from 1965 onwards comes from the latest release of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy. This earlier data is sourced from Vaclav Smil’s work Energy Transitions: Global and National Perspectives. In the chart shown we see global primary energy consumption dating back to the year 1800. And the transition from one source to another was incredibly slow. But If we look back a couple of centuries ago, our energy mixes where relatively homogeneous. Today when we think about energy mixes we think about a diverse range of sources – coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydropower, solar, wind, biofuels. We do this to compare energy data across different metrics and sources. So at Our World in Data we try to maintain consistency by converting all energy data to watt-hours. This can be confusing, and make comparisons difficult. In the energy domain, there are many different units thrown around – joules, exajoules, million tonnes of oil equivalents, barrel equivalents, British thermal units, terawatt-hours, to name a few. This article focuses on the breakdown of energy sources: how they vary across the world and how this is changing over time. What does our energy mix look like today? What countries have the ‘cleanest’ energy mix? And are we making progress in shifting towards a low-carbon energy system? The world therefore needs to shift away from fossil fuels to an energy mix dominated by low-carbon sources of energy – renewable technologies and nuclear power. Not only is energy production the largest driver of climate change, the burning of fossil fuels and biomass also comes at a large cost to human health: at least five million deaths are attributed to air pollution each year. Energy production – mainly the burning of fossil fuels – accounts for around three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions. ![]()
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