Guess what?.....Coal is back! Consumption hits 44 year high. (
RT).
Coal’s consumption comes just below the 32.9 percent share for
crude oil, which has lost market share for the 14th consecutive year, says
BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2014.
Europe is increasing coal imports the fastest, buying the most from the US
where cheaper shale gas is replacing coal at power stations.
“
Europe is increasing its carbon emissions because it’s using too much
coal because it’s cheap,” Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s Chief Financial Officer
Simon Henry said in an interview on Bloomberg Television on June 3.
India made its second largest volumetric increase on record and contributed
21 percent in global growth.
China recorded the weakest absolute growth since 2008, but still
accounted for 67 percent of the global total.
A "
dramatic slowdown" in Chinese energy growth to 4.7 percent last
year from 8.4 percent in 2012 puts a question mark over China's 2013 official
economic growth figure of 7.7 percent, the Guardian quotes Christof Ruhl, BP's
chief economist and author the statistical review.
"
It is not easy to reconcile the slowdown in energy growth numbers and
official [gross domestic product] numbers ... you can draw your own conclusions
from that," Ruhl said.
However, the pace of growth of the global coal consumption is still below the
10-year average of 3.9 percent.
The production of coal globally grew by 0.8 percent, the weakest growth since
2002. Indonesia’s increase of 9.4 percent together with Australia’s 7.3 percent
offset a decline in the US of 3.1 percent. China recorded the weakest volumetric
growth of 1.2 percent in production since 2000.
Prof Nick Stern, author of the influential climate change report, the Stern
Review, and the chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change,
said
his latest study showed the economic risks of unchecked climate change overcame
previous estimates.
He warns that living standards could start to decline later
this century unless the growth in annual emissions of greenhouse gases is
checked.
Meanwhile the renewable energy sources continued to increase in
2013, reaching a record 2.7 percent of global energy consumption, up from 0.8
percent a decade ago.
China recorded the largest incremental growth in renewables, followed by the
US, while growth in Europe’s leading players such as Germany, Spain and Italy
was below average.
Globally the use of wind energy increased by 20.7 percent contributing more
than half of renewable power growth. Solar power grew even more rapidly, by 33
percent, but from a smaller base.
Global biofuels production grew by below average at 6.1 percent.
Related: China ‘the coal monster’ fuel dominated energy use overwhelms Obama’s EPA CO2 reduction schemes.
