Read on Twitter
Thread: For decades, oil demand has been the result of a function: economic activity x population = X million barrels per day. Near-term lines are jagged; long-term lines are smooth, up, to the right. That's changed now. Technology determines oil's future. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN
The two recent @OPECnews @IEA forecasts break from decades of orothodoxy: demand eventually stops going up, even in the most conservative (and for oil, most bullish) scenarios. For @BP and @Total and others, demand goes down (sometimes way down) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN
Peak oil demand is also business as usual (hello @bp_plc) for some companies heavily invested in oil’s future. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-17/bp-sees-peak-oil-even-without-major-new-laws-on-climate-change?sref=JMv1OWqN
Look closely these vies of energy's future, and there's more to it than just “oil demand slowly tops out.” IEA has already called the top on coal-fired power, and by 2040 it'll be <20% of power for the first time since the Industrial Revolution. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN
If terminal decline sounds dramatic, that’s because it is. A decade ago, it would have been heretical for the IEA to even suggest such a thing. Even in its 2010 World Energy Outlook, it maintains that “coal remains the backbone of global electricity generation.” Compare to 2020!
Even though OPEC’s outlook only concerns oil, we should apply some creative thinking to the cartel’s view of energy’s future. Technology make oil’s supremacy less certain, in the same way that solar’s growth and development has changed coal’s prospects. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN
One weird trick for looking at how an organization thinks about change drivers over time: word counts her page. Mentions measure significance: the more times something is mentioned, the more likely it is to be important to report's vision of the future https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN
13 years ago, in an age of tight supply, increasing demand, and high and rising oil prices:
Resources > Technology > Climate > Electric vehicles (zero mentions!) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN
Resources > Technology > Climate > Electric vehicles (zero mentions!) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN
By 2019, “technology” was mentioned more than three times as often as “resources.” Electric vehicles, for that matter, were mentioned more than resources – and “climate” was mentioned more than either of them. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN
You might notice the sharp downward spike in mentions of technology in 2020. Absolute mentions of both dropped significantly, but something heretofore unmentioned appears almost 400 times: the Covid-19 pandemic. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN
The question for the long term, though, isn’t about a pandemic. It’s about technology, and whether or not oil demand responds to new technologies the way coal is now responding to solar: with structural decline. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN
For more on OPEC: check out @JLeeEnergy's latest https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-11/covid-19-is-big-oil-s-asteroid-strike?sref=JMv1OWqN
And check out @DrSimEvans excellent review of the @IEA World Energy Outlook, featuring this nifty graph of how many times its Sustainable Development Scenario is mentioned each year https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-is-now-cheapest-electricity-in-history-confirms-iea
To conclude:
In 2020:
Technology >
Climate >
Resources >
Electric Vehicles
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN /end
In 2020:
Technology >
Climate >
Resources >
Electric Vehicles
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/the-future-of-energy-is-about-technology-not-fossil-fuels?sref=JMv1OWqN /end
