Fossil fuels remain the real engine behind economic growth

In 2023, the US economy grew while greenhouse gas emissions declined, according to a new report — a good environmental outcome and a good economic outcome brought to you by our old friend: petroleum. 

Wait, what? 

“Up until a few years ago, a better economy meant more fossil-fuel consumption,” reported NPR climate correspondent Jeff Brady. He continued: “The fact” — and here, let’s take a good long look at the word “fact” — “that those two are decoupling, that growth can happen without using more fossil fuels, shows that the country can potentially address climate change without a lot of economic pain.”

That would be a fascinating fact if it were a fact, but it isn’t. 

The overall decline in US greenhouse gas emissions was driven by a large reduction — 8% — in emissions from power plants.

That didn’t happen because we started using unicorn smiles and good intentions to generate electricity.

It happened because we are using more natural gas and less coal, a trend that has been driven in the long term not by environmental policy but because natural gas is generally more economically efficient for running power plants.

Brady and NPR have it exactly wrong: Rather than using less fossil fuels, the United States consumed a record amount of natural gas in 2023 and is expected to set a new record in 2024, according to the US Energy Information Administration. In case you’ve forgotten, natural gas is a fossil fuel.

As NPR reports, US emissions today are 17.2% below 2005 levels.

And that is not because of some grand Green New Deal: It is largely due to the availability of cheap natural gas, much of it acquired through — horrors! — the combination of modern extraction techniques colloquially known as “fracking.”

Fracking made gas cheap and plentiful, and cheap and plentiful gas made using relatively high-emissions sources such as coal economically unattractive. 

NPR isn’t alone in having some difficulty admitting forthrightly that this is a climate success story driven by fossil fuels.

Because climate change has been turned into a moral and quasi-religious crusade (see my little monograph “Inside the Carbon Cult“), these are very, very weird times when it comes to how we talk about fossil fuels, electricity, and emissions. 

Consider the marketing campaign for the Chinese-made Polestones’ 01 Electric SUV, which, as it says right there in the name, is an electric SUV — one with an impressive range of nearly 700 miles.

How did the makers manage such a startling feat?

By including a 1.5-liter gasoline engine that recharges the electrical system, of course.

Finally, the solution to the EV range anxiety problem: is gasoline. 

Strange that nobody ever thought to power a car with gas before. 

But EVs are fashionable.

They are so fashionable that there is a real race afoot to build out the necessary charging infrastructure.

Happily, there has been some technological advance there, too, with new designs for charging stations powered by the very same magical fuel that gives my Ford truck the same 700-mile range as the Polestones SUV: diesel — yet another fossil fuel. 

“While there are several ways to charge electric vehicles, diesel generators have proven to be a reliable and cost-effective solution,” reports Energy5, a provider of charging stations and other energy products.

The reasons? Diesel is cheap and plentiful, and it is easy to put diesel generators where you want them.

Building new power lines for electric charging, on the other hand, is expensive and cumbrous.

Of course, you caveman types might want to skip the electrical middleman and just use diesel. 

I wouldn’t blame you if you did. 

Hertz, which did the fashionable thing and made a huge investment in EVs a couple of years ago, is selling a third of its electric fleet and using the proceeds to buy — surprise! — gasoline-powered cars, the kind that people who are traveling actually want to rent. 

EVs are cool, and one of these days I might trade in my truck for one.

But you can bet that the electricity that charges it up is going to be made out of fossil fuels — from natural gas to diesel — for the foreseeable future.

And that is fine: From a climate point of view, gas is preferable to coal. Small, steady improvements that take into account economic and technological realities are precisely where real climate progress is going to come from. 

Moralistic scolding is the only thing cheaper and more plentiful than fossil fuels, but it isn’t going to reduce emissions. 

Kevin D. Williamson is the national correspondent for The Dispatch and a writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.