BP (BP.) has said the use of fossil fuel-fired power was up year on year, in its latest world energy review, while carbon emissions climbed more than any time in the past seven years.
The other major finding was the continued strength of US oil and gas production, which had the “largest ever increases of any country” in production because of onshore shale expansion, with increases of 2.2m barrels per day of oil and 78bn cubic metres of natural gas. This was more than enough oil growth to make up for falling volumes from Venezuela and Iran. At the same time, while renewables grew 14.5 per cent from 2017, the energy giant said this was only a third of all power growth in 2018, with the rest coming from fossil fuels.
Chief executive Bob Dudley said the research showed electrification was moving faster than decarbonisation, saying the world was “not on a sustainable path”. In 2018, energy consumption grew 2.9 per cent year on year, compared with the 10-year average of 1.5 per cent. Gas-fired plants provided 40 per cent of this increase, and overall natural gas supply grew 5.2 per cent. BP said coal-fired plants still provide the greatest share of power, at 38 per cent, while natural gas provides 23.2 per cent. Renewables increased in share from 8.4 per cent to 9.3 per cent between 2017 and 2018.
The story of heavy demand and supply increases in oil and gas should not come as a surprise to BP, which has added 22 upstream projects since 2016 and 500,000-600,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to production. The energy review also estimated a 12 per cent increase in Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves, to 297bn barrels.
BP’s chief economist, Spencer Dale, said economic numbers had pointed to energy demand slowing last year. “There was an unusually large number of hot and cold days across many of the world’s major demand centres last year, particularly in the US, China and Russia, with the increased demand for cooling and heating services helping to explain the strong growth in energy consumption in each of these countries,” he said. The odd part was the combination of very hot and very cold days, he said, as any given year usually only had one or the other.
