How much coal, oil, and natural gas do we use today?

Thinking about fossil fuel consumption in terms of kilowatt-hours, which according to Wikipedia is “a composite unit of energy equal to one kilowatt (kW) sustained for one hour”, as we did yesterday can be quite abstract.

One other way to cut the data is to look at the overall percentages coal, oil, and natural gas make up in our overall fossil fuel use:

Or if you prefer absolute numbers, here’s the best I could find:

• According to the International Energy Agency, global coal use surpassed 8 billion tonnes in 2022 (for the first time ever)

• According to the BP Statistical Review of Energy, global consumption of oil was almost 97 million barrels per day in 2021, or 35.4 billion barrels for the year (a barrel of oil is 158.987 litres if you were interested)

• According to the BP Statistical Review of Energy, global consumption of natural gas was 4,037.5 billion cubic metres in 2021

Any way you look at it, these are huge numbers - as are the associated greenhouse gas emissions.