Welcome back, climateers.
Primary energy is an energy source found in nature that has not been subjected to any human engineered conversion process. It is energy contained in raw fuels, and other forms of energy received as input to a system; it can be non-renewable or renewable.
87% of global primary energy use derives from fossil fuels.
These are chiefly coal, oil and gas, as you can see from the green, grey and red lines in the graph below. While coal is the most polluting from a climate perspective, analysis shows that methane leaks from oil and gas facilities in the U.S. are 60% higher than originally measured. Methane traps, on average, 86 times the heat that an equivalent amount of CO2 would do. The rush to gas globally, driven largely by advances in fracking technology and rapidly falling prices, is only going to accelerate climate change.
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