OPINION:
Back in 2020, the International Energy Agency, created in 1974 to address OPEC and the risk it then posed, openly joined the environmental crazies to embrace and amplify the narrative of scarcity.
That narrative, which Americans have heard most of their lives, simply repeats over and over again that we are running out of affordable and reliable energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas. In this instance, the IEA projected that the world would reach peak oil demand sometime before the end of this decade. They placed that peak demand at less than 102 million barrels a day; the world already uses about 100 million barrels of oil daily. So, according to the international bureaucrats at IEA, we are already pretty much at peak demand for oil.
Like many predictions about oil demand, the IEA projection was built on a few shaky assumptions, including that electric vehicles would be widely adopted, that wind, solar and other alternative energy sources would begin to replace oil more or less right now, and that concerns over global warming would compel nations and their citizens to reduce their consumption of traditional energy sources.
It hasn’t turned out that way. Electric vehicles made up about 20% of cars (about 17 million) sold worldwide in 2024. That means 80% of cars (about 62 million) sold globally were powered by gasoline or diesel. Probably better if we don’t get into ships, heavy-duty trucks and airplanes.
With respect to energy sources, about 85% of the world’s primary energy comes from coal, oil and natural gas, just like it has for the past 50 years or so. Alternative energy sources have grown in absolute terms, but their share of total primary energy production has remained modest.
The good news for people in all sectors of the energy business is that every bit of energy and every source of energy pulled out of the ground or built — coal, nuclear, natural gas, wind, solar, batteries — is needed and is used. Although energy systems are always changing, no energy sources are ever really discarded.
For thousands of years, water power, wind power, horses and the burning of wood were our primary sources of energy. In the century immediately after the energy revolution, coal was the primary source of energy on this planet. For the past 75 years or so, oil has ruled. At some point in our lives, natural gas may take the lead.
In each case, the introduction of new sources of energy has added to rather than replaced existing energy sources. Last year, the world used more coal, almost three times more, than it did in 1965, even though coal is about to drop into third place among primary sources of energy.
Two final features about the IEA’s nonsensical projection of peak oil demand are worth mentioning. First, more than 3 billion people on this planet still derive most of the energy they use from burning biomass. It seems exceedingly unlikely that those 3 billion souls, the poorest among us, will be content with their children and grandchildren remaining mired in poverty and its close cognate, energy poverty. They will, as billions before them did, seek to improve their lives by getting and using more energy.
Until we have completed the previous energy transition — from animal and wood power to coal and oil power — there is no way to imagine that we will be able to start whatever the next transition will be. You would think those who spend their entire lives studying and thinking about energy at the IEA would have been able to figure that out.
That also means, at least in the United States, we will continue to dominate in energy production. The only scarcity we face is a lack of imagination, and the only peak we face is peak idiocy by international bureaucracies.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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