Global temperatures are rising in 2023 and so is worldwide consumption of coal and oil
Energize Weekly, August 2, 2023
As the world sizzles, with July the hottest month on Earth since records have been kept, consumption of coal and oil – the two main sources of climate-warming greenhouse gases – are also setting records.
Global coal consumption reached an all-time high in 2022, a 3.3 percent year-over-year increase to 8.3 billion tons, according to an International Energy Agency (IEA) coal market report.
Consumption will stay near that record level in 2023 spurred by strong growth in Asia for power generation and industrial uses, even as coal use falls in the U.S. and Europe.
At the same time, 2023 global oil demand is projected to climb by 2.2 million barrels a day to a record 102.1 million barrels a day, the IEA said in its July oil market report.
That record oil consumption comes even as the agency has revised its growth estimates down in the face of “persistent macroeconomic headwinds” and the prospect of a manufacturing slump as central banks around the world still pursue high-interest-rate monetary policies to tamp down inflation.
The rising consumption of fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, comes as regions from Europe to the U.S. to China have been battered by heat waves apparently driven by climate change.
Scientists with World Weather Attribution (WWA), a collaboration among several European universities and meteorological institutes, analyzed climate data charting the intensity of heat waves.
Their conclusion is that the climate forcing of greenhouse gases had greatly increased the likelihood of the heat waves in Southern Europe, the U.S. and China.
“North America, Europe and China have experienced heatwaves increasingly frequently over the last years as a result of warming caused by human activities, hence the current heat waves are not rare in today’s climate,” the WWA study said.
The likelihood of a heat event in China is now once every five years compared to once every 250 years without human-induced climate change. In the U.S.-Mexico region without man-made greenhouse gases, this summer’s heat wave “would have been virtually impossible.”
Globally, July is set to become the hottest month on record, according to a report by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
“Contributing to the exceptionally warm July for the globe as a whole is a long period of unusually high sea surface temperatures (SSTs),” the report said. “Since April, the global average daily SST has remained at record values for the time of year.”
“The extreme weather which has affected many millions of people in July is unfortunately the harsh reality of climate change and a foretaste of the future,” Petteri Taalas, the WMO secretary-general, said in a statement. “The need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is more urgent than ever before.”
At least in the short-term that reduction does not look to be happening.
China, India and Southeast Asian countries are continuing to burn coal apace and together are expected to account for three out of every four tons of coal consumed worldwide in 2023, according to the IEA.
“After three turbulent years marked by the COVID-19 shock in 2020, the strong post-pandemic rebound in 2021 and the turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, coal markets have so far returned to more predictable and stable patterns in 2023,” the agency said.
Global coal demand is estimated to have grown by about 1.5 percent in the first half of 2023 to a total of about 4.7 billion tons, with two-thirds of that coming from power generation.
China is also the biggest driver in oil consumption with its petrochemical industry accounting for 70 percent of global gains, while demand from countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – which includes 38 of the world’s most advanced economies – remains “anemic.”
The increased oil consumption doesn’t stop in 2023, the IEA forecasts, with demand to rise by 1.2 million barrels a day in 2024 to yet another record, 102.8 million barrels a day.
