Feds Admit Fossil Fuels Are Still the Cheapest
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released its 2024 World Energy Outlook, an annual market forecast regarded as the authoritative standard for global energy analysis. This year’s report predicts that fossil fuel demand will peak by 2030, that clean energy sources will generate more than half of the world’s energy by the end of the decade, and that global energy prices will decline as traditional energy use phases out.
As many cheered the IEA’s report, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) quickly tempered expectations with its own study identifying natural gas as the cheapest residential energy source available. Electricity (energy derived from an electrical current rather than a pipeline) was the most expensive, costing 3.5 times more than natural gas. In real-world terms, households that heat their homes with electricity this winter will pay 75 percent more than those that use natural gas.
The DOE’s report tells an inconvenient truth that many governments, including the Biden administration, want to ignore: Fossil fuels are cheap, abundant, and critical to meeting the world’s energy needs. Restricting access to these sources will increase costs for consumers, stifle global economic development, and do little to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Fossil fuels meet more than 80 percent of global energy demand, a dominant position that they will likely hold as emerging economies become more industrialized. As people become more prosperous, they will be able to transition away from heating and cooking with dung, which is estimated to prematurely kill 3.7 million people per year through indoor air pollution. Higher levels of wealth allow societies to focus on basic needs, such as sanitation and
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