Glaringly absent from this list is the west.
Just how will western countries provide for the increased base electric energy demand for the grid for this transition?
If we are not going to use coal or oil, hydro is already built out, nat gas is the only remaining option to provide base load at night or when the wind does not blow. The amount of batteries needed for energy storage otherwise is impossibly staggering.
This is not going to be as easy as we are led to believe, and something is going to break if we keep piling on more load, at the same time we are cutting our use of coal and other fossil fuel generation.
Like Norway, I think many that can afford it in the west will end up still using an ICE vehicle for reliability, and have an EV for short trips. Although Norway has made great strides in EV adoption, their oil consumption has not been affected much as expected. The reason is that many people there bought EVs instead of riding the bus, and many still keep and use an ICE vehicle. A similar trend may become apparent in the west, as EV purchases may not replace ICE vehicles 1:1, but much of the sales figures are additions to the LDV fleet.
On March 25, Equinor highlighted this: EVs are 2nd or 3rd cars in Norway. We tweeted [LINK] “5/7. In Norway, EVs are 2nd or 3rd cars! 03/25 Equinor explains why Norwegians #EV mileage is low relative to new car sales. "We’ve bought an EV instead of taking the bus, or it becomes the second or the third car" says @EWaerness [LINK] #OOTT.” (vi) Absent governments mandating ICE vehicles get junked, the other key factor is that ICE vehicles are lasting longer. We tweeted [LINK] “6/7. A concept everyone has experienced - ICE vehicles are lasting longer. 03/31. @BloombergNEF. at least in China, ICE vehicles retirements are at a very low level even in the face of increasing EV and ICE sales. #OOTT.” (vii) It is important to remember that the IEA forecasting a 60% EV share of total car sales means a displacement of nearly 6 mmb/d in 2030 is not an IEA forecast that says its oil demand forecast will be reduced by 6 mmb/d. It’s WEO Oct 2022 assumed EVs were 50% of total car sales in 2030 and didn’t see peak oil demand until the mid 2030s. So the incremental 10% EV sales penetration, by itself, isn’t likely to move its peak oil demand closer by very much.
Under this scenario, we may have a much longer life than expected for SU and other producers to continue to provide transportation fuels.
