The world still needs fossil fuels
The boom in energy prices has taken us by surprise. Oil prices have leapt to multi-year highs, while gas shortages are affecting everything from ice cream to dentistry. Even coal has made headlines as one of the best-performing asset classes of the year. Many people had assumed that fossil fuels were obsolete and we could live without them. It turns out we can’t. In fact we need more of them and will for decades to come: the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that global demand for oil will grow at 1% or 2% a year; and our appetite for gas will expand at least twice as fast. Even coal consumption is set to rise modestly.
Given all the progress with renewables, how
