Let us be blunt about matters. The chances of keeping global temperatures below 1.5°C as in “pre-industrial” times any time soon are frankly unlikely. Back in 2021, the world consumed 595.1 exajoules of energy. Of this, around 82.3% came from fossil fuels and a mere 17.7% came from non-carbon dioxide producing sources, including hydroelectricity, nuclear and renewables. Whatever you say about the tremendous growth of renewables – and it is tremendous – their actual contribution to global energy supplies amounted to under 0.07%. Furthermore, the growth of energy consumption in 2021 was around 32.14 exajoules, while the contribution of renewables was 39.9 exajoules. In short, the additional demand for energy used up in 2021 was around 80% of the renewable contribution.

Of course, these figures come from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy and will thus be assumed by some to be a pack of lies. How the Statistical Review came about back in 1950s is an interesting story in itself, but no matter. Until somebody else comes up with a more coherent set, it will have to do. Equally, the growth in renewables has been accelerating in the past year. But if the number looks vanishingly small, it has to be remembered that renewables are normally calibrated as a percentage of electricity supply. This in turn provides only 20% of global energy, of which around 28% including hydropower is renewable. Do the sums and you come up with a similar figure.

Meanwhile the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines “pre-industrial” in the range 1850-1900, largely as it was only then that the data became available. This is a curious definition, largely because historians tend to see the industrial age as starting with James Watt’s steam engine in 1776. However, the definition does let Britain, France, Germany and the USA off the hook for having started the whole problem in the first place. That said, before painting a rather rosy picture of “pre-industrial” here, the global population has increased from around 1.6 billion in 1900 to near 7.9 billion now and global GDP in constant dollars has gone from around $3.3 trillion to near $104 trillion.

There are, in short, a hell of a lot more of us than there used to be and we are in theory at least enormously richer. It should also be remembered that the average human lifespan has doubled to over 70 years since 1900, so “industrialisation” hasn’t been entirely negative.

Temperatures started to rise first in the 1980s and post 1990 have risen at gathering speed reaching +1°C in the past few years on the 1900s average. You would have to be pretty ignorant, or indeed heavily prejudiced not to see the implications of this and its acceleration. For a start, sea levels have risen by 10 mm since 2020 alone, which is fine for some but life-threatening for others. The oceans are getting more acidic and saltier. Greenland is starting to lose its icecaps as are both the Arctic and Antarctic. We are seeing unprecedented floods in some areas and unexpected droughts in others. One could go on depressingly ad nauseum, but climate change deniers are either fools, or have their minds so firmly on increasing the volumes of their bank accounts that they simply do not care.

That said, there are some perfectly rational people, who do not deny the facts of climate change, but fear quite reasonably that the transition to a non-fossil fuel energy is likely to produce considerable societal upheaval. The argument is a simple one. As the IMF and the World Bank warned in October 2022, some 54 countries are sufficiently deep in debt to seem likely to default. While they only account for 3% of the global economy, they do account for around 50% of the global population. Given that much of this is dollar debt, there are implications for the world’s primary currency, not to mention the Chinese economy. And the transition to a greener energy economy is going to be very expensive in terms of the investment required.

Forget for a moment the immediate response that solar and wind power may be cheaper than its fossil fuel equivalents and the price of the power may be potentially lower on a per kWh basis. This makes the assumption that the investment involved in replacing that old power provison is going to be cost free. It is clearly not. Even if we replace older fossil-fuel power capacity as it is due to retire, there will still be a need for new investment and that process would still be very slow in terms of climate change. Replacing the existing energy supply system, when it is still capable of satisfying our needs, will cost much more. Yet even in richer countries, governments have debt issues.

Yet if Putin’s attack on Ukraine has shown us anything, it is that energy costs lie at the heart of concerns about inflation. In practice, the existing energy supply system has reacted remarkably well – primarily through liquid natural gas (LNG) – but the fact remains that energy supply and the investment involved remain central to any modern economy. It has been good to be reminded of this fact. Access to energy and electricity in particular and its cost are fundamental to perceptions of well-being. It may be quite fun having a candle lit dinner in a three-hour power cut, but after days and days it ceases to be romantic. This is particularly true in the age of i-phones and computer banking. Violence at the gasoline station was not unusual in the USA under OPEC embargo. And freezing to death is no fun at all.

There are certainly no miracle cures available in a world where economic growth – however defined – remains essential to a still expanding global population. It is significant that the only post-1990 years when carbon dioxide output actually fell marginally was first in 1991, when the Russian economy collapsed its GDP by around 50%, in 2008 during the financial crisis and in 2020, when COVID 19 started having a major effect on economic activity.

Furthermore, with the resource of hydrocarbons still very substantial in terms of OPEC reserves, any large reduction in their consumption is likely to produce a significant reduction in their price. This alone will make their consumption more attractive as against any alternatives. The lowering price is a key economic stimulant and vice-versa.

In addition, a major shift in how we supply our energy and what we do with it is fraught with geopolitics. When COP21 in Paris requested that countries produced Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), a number of major oil and gas exporters pointed out – with undeniable logic – that they did not actually burn much of the stuff themselves. They simply sold it. Since their actual contribution to climate change was proportionately minor, it was not specifically their problem. As Saudi Arabia’s income from oil exports is around 40% of its GDP, it is unlikely to be on the side of those who want a significant reduction in its consumption. The same goes for much of OPEC, although the Algerian Government did point out that the country has huge solar resources amounting to around 5 billion GWh a year and hot geothermal groundwater asset which is 700,000 km long.

The NDCs make very interesting reading for those looking at the politics of climate change mitigation and we will return to some of them at a later date. However, first a minor point and then some major ones. The minor one is that throwing tomato ketchup at famous paintings or accusing the oil majors of ‘greenwashing’ if they give to charities, may make you feel better and feel you are doing your bit for the planet, but you are not actually achieving very much by way of solving the problem, not least if Mum and Dad pick you up from the police station and drive you safely home.

Now for more important matters. The current direction of travel in climate mitigation is to electrify as much as possible using renewable resources. The second is to find a liquid substitute for gasoline, diesel and heavy fuel oil that does not produce carbon dioxide. A third is to reduce the amount of methane escaping into the atmosphere and also push for a significant reduction in nitrous oxide output. Finally, a reduction of fluorinated gases would be valuable although ironically these are usually a substitute for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Needless to say, the successful campaign against CFCs and their destruction of the ozone layer does suggest that global agreements can change things.

In regard to the question of electrification, whether of cars or domestic heating, much depends on where and how the electricity is produced. It is, for example, perfectly possible to be driving around in a state-of-the-art electric vehicle and be producing more carbon dioxide than in one run of gasoline. This is because the amount of energy from the electricity may be as little as 35% of the energy required to produce the electricity in, say, a coal-fired power station. This equation is not fully understood by many people. The assumption is that if the machine is electric, it is clean. Regrettably this is not the case. The greenhouse gases are simply being moved elsewhere and power demand is increased from the carbon-producing power station. There will also be transmission losses too.

In effect, your electric vehicle is only helping reduce carbon dioxide output if it is fuelled from roughly 18% of global electricity supply. The Norwegians are particularly famous for the fact that over 80% of their new cars are electric using hydropower, but are ever-so-slightly open to the charge of hypocrisy, given that they export around 2 million barrels of oil equivalent a year. Everybody should be so lucky and thanks for keeping the lights on in Germany.

Furthermore, electricity demand from all sources is increasing rapidly. From 2011 to 2021 the average annual increase in output was 2.5%. In 2021 alone the increase was 6.2%. A great deal of this can now be attributed to the internet and what people use it for. The spectacular collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange has highlighted this, with Bitcoin mining discovered to be using more electricity than Sweden in early 2022. This, however, is merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of power demand. The 3-D world of games and video use massively more power than your average Netflix show. One US study in 2011, suggested that the internet was using around 134 GW a year or around 6% of global supply. Given the huge expansion in non-crypto uses by banks, retail outlets and cloud data bases this is now clearly growing enormously.

To meet this demand, renewable electricity’s output globally increased by 14% in 2021, which was a triumph. But coal-fired power increased by 8% in the same year. Given that coal-produced power was roughly three times as much as renewables, the percentages are not comforting. In addition, the renewable figures used here include biomass about which many people have reservations.

On other fronts, there are plausible reasons for using hydrogen and indeed ammonia as potential gaseous or liquid fuels, but both have problems; hydrogen has a big energy punch but is tricky to use while ammonia is toxic. We will return to these at a later date. Solar and wind too have their issues, not least their high volatility due to the weather and potential relationship with electricity grids. This may indeed lead to the eventual abandonment of the concept of large-scale power networks, as some have advocated.

Nuclear fission is still out there, although constant changes to make it safer have made it systematically more expensive while extending the amount of time it takes to build. Waste storage is conveniently forgotten about as tomorrow’s problem. Nuclear fusion is still out there, although its proponents have a habit of claiming it will save the planet when using gigantic amounts of electricity to produce not a lot of heat, which in turn is supposed to produce more electricity than it consumes.

That said, we are now better at storing electricity through batteries than we were a mere decade ago and if Putin’s insane war against Ukraine has taught us anything, it is that energy lies at the heart of our affairs including what we eat. There are roughly around 1.4 billion cars in the world and EVs have not yet made much of a dent in that, so far. Replacing them, along with all those trucks, trains and airplanes is going to take…well… rather a lot of energy, just to make them.