New Energy
Five Charts That Capture the State of Global Energy in 2022
The past year saw unprecedented energy shocks with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, even as the world got closer to peak fossil fuel consumption.
An oil pumpjack in Long Beach, California.
Photographer: Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
For my final column of each year, I often look back on the data, stories and charts that told us the most about energy and climate. What a year 2022 has been. Recapping it with a handful of charts is challenging. But a few themes carry across the months. History shows one peak in hydrocarbon demand; forecasts show another, definitive one. Energy is both highly concentrated and highly distributed. Crises abound — but so do responses. And everywhere, we have glimpses of the future, of both new problems and new solutions.
The shock of the old