Coal consumption has jumped to its highest since 1970, with a 30.1 percent share of the global energy market in 2013. The BP Statistics Review also said renewables reached a record 2.7 percent due to fears of rising CO2 emissions and climate change.
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.
