It's the mining, stupid!
Published by MAC on 2006-10-09
It's the mining, stupid!
9th October 2006
You may think that mounting rhetoric about renewable energy is being matched by major strides in replacing fossil fuels with alternatives. Or that oil and gas consumption is rocketing well ahead of other energy provision. Both wrong - according to figures released by Forbes magazine last week. Arguably, today's battles against global warming and socio-environmental desecration should rather centre around the massive absolute increases in coal and uranium use over the past three decades.
In other words ( and to paraphrase Forbes): "It's the mining, stupid!"
Here's a roundup of global energy use, as per fuel of origin, published by Forbes magazine on October 9th.
* Oil's share of the world energy market is down by a third on what it was 30 years ago
* Coal maintains the quarter-share of the market it had three decades ago - but actual consumption has almost doubled in that period
* China is the world's biggest single producer and consumer of thermal coal; the US is the second biggest miner of coal; followed by India - but some way behind
* Nuclear/uranium-derived "energy" provision has more than quintupled since 1973, now representing 16% of electricity generation worldwide
* The contribution of so-called "renewables" - wind, solar, wavepower, biomass etc - to meeting global electricity demand hasn't changed in the past thirty years, remaining at 11% of the total