Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels

Two pieces of news occurred on the same day in October 2023 which together highlight the scale of the challenge the world faces with regards to weaning ourselves off fossil fuels.

Chevron agreed the purchase of Hess for $53 billion. Little known in the UK, HESS is a huge player in the oil exploration and drilling business, with a global portfolio of assets including US Shale gas and deepwater oil in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Guyanan coast.

Separately, the International Energy Agency (which actually has legally binding decision-making powers over IEA Member countries) released its 2023 World Energy Outlook.

Although a long report, this paragraph summarises it nicely:

“Extreme volatility in energy markets during the global energy crisis has highlighted the importance of affordable, reliable and resilient supply, especially in price-sensitive developing economies that see the largest increase in demand for energy services. Energy transitions rely on electrification and technologies like wind, solar PV and batteries, and push electricity security and diversified supply for clean technologies and critical minerals up the policy agenda.”
IEA: World Energy Outlook 2023

So what can we learn from this juxtaposition? Clearly investment in fossil fuels needs to continue in the short to medium term, and so it is not unreasonable that Chevron and other oil majors continue to pursue oil investments.

But on balance the mood music coming from the IEA is very positive. Despite the scale of the challenge, it sees momentum really picking up behind all aspects of the Green Energy Transition – from manufacturing capacity expansion to deployment of emerging technologies at scale.

For instance, this projection is quite startling for a nation built around the internal combustion engine: “Thanks largely to the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, we now project that 50% of new US car registrations will be electric in 2030.”

Whilst the report states that “the key to an orderly transition is to scale up investment in all aspects of a clean energy system….the urgent challenge is to increase the pace of new clean energy projects” we do hold some reservations and some concern about the section of the report about Human Behavioural Change (4.4.4, page 193).

Brimstone Energy UK & Energy Abundance

At Brimstone Energy UK, we strongly believe in our message of Energy Abundance – that having plentiful low-cost energy makes life better. Therefore, it is concerning to us that the IEA even entertains the idea that consumers should use less energy.

It is this kind of perspective that sees the authorities in Cambridge City make life incredibly difficult for commuters without providing realistic alternatives. Do the authorities provide a Park and Ride system that is on a motorway interchange, or one that is extremely inaccessible, made worse by inappropriate road closures? [Consider the opportunity missed to put a park and ride base at the new A14/M11 interchange, versus the carnage of trying to access the completely inappropriate Madingley Road park and ride site – try it at rush hour to find out!]

Whilst we may want human behaviour to change, the reality is that we need to meet people where they are, not where we want them to be. Why is the brand-new Abbey Group retail park in St Ives Cambridgeshire such a success, whereas the town centre of St Ives is struggling so much? Simply put, the privately owned retail park provides what people want – convenient location, free parking, good selection of tenanted outlets and a Gridserve rapid charging hub. St Ives Town Centre is no longer convenient to access by car, has no free parking, a declining retail proposition and one or two slow EV chargers.

This isn’t rocket science! This is GCSE Human Geography.