2023-12-16 09:00:05
This post is taken from the newsletter ” Human warmth “, sent every Tuesday at 12 p.m. Every week, journalist Nabil Wakim, who hosts the Chaleur Humaine podcast, answers questions from Internet users on the climate challenge. You can register for free here:
The question of the week
“Hello, congratulations once more for your podcast. I wonder regarding “carbon neutrality”, you say that it means getting rid of fossil fuels, but does that mean that we will no longer use oil at all? It’s hard to imagine, in such a short time! And if we still need oil, does that mean we have to keep part of the production in operation? » Question asked by William during a chat in November – which I didn’t have time to answer.
My answer : Dear William, you are right to highlight a shortcut that I often make: yes, in 2050, even if we are carbon neutral, there will very likely still be oil in our uses. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) scenario, we must go from consumption of 100 million barrels of oil per day today to 24 million in 2050. But this does not require new oil drilling .
1/Will we be at zero oil in 2050?
This is clearly the most difficult challenge of the climate transition: to massively reduce our oil consumption, while we continue to consume more than 100 million barrels per day (and this continues to increase). This path is possible, but it is “narrow”, says the IEA kindly.
In the IEA carbon neutrality scenarioconsumption must increase to 24 million barrels per day, which remains important, but takes us back to the consumption of the 1950s. In this work which is a reference, two thirds of energy in 2050 will come from renewable energies, particularly solar power, which is becoming the world’s leading source of energy.
Why would there still be oil in our uses? The petroleum products that remain, at this date, are used in areas that cannot do otherwise, notably plastics, a small part of aviation or certain industrial sectors, and especially not to run cars. We talked a little regarding it in this episode of “Human Heat” on the industry.
But these uses will need to be coupled with devices that make it possible to capture the carbon emitted, what is called carbon sequestration. A technology that is not yet widely deployed.
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