Despite climate concerns, demand for dirty fuels is surging

GREEN TYPES had hoped that the recovery from the pandemic might jump-start the world’s decarbonisation efforts. Governments say they want to build back better and greener, and have announced ambitious plans to kick the fossil-fuel habit. In Europe, officials have unveiled policies to achieve a 55% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, compared with their level in 1990, by the end of this decade. On July 21st Japan announced plans for fossil fuels to fall from 76% of its power-generation mix in 2019 to 41% by 2030.Despite the grand talk, though, fossil fuels are resurgent. A recent report from the International Energy Agency makes for sobering reading. Global electricity demand is forecast to grow by nearly 5% in 2021 and by 4% in 2022. Fossil-fuel-based power will probably make up 45% of the extra demand this year and 40% next year. (By contrast, it made up about a quarter of new power generation in 2019.)