A small but crucial share of the world’s petroleum goes into non-energy products such as plastics, cosmetics, asphalt and lubricants. But the vast majority is ultimately burned for fuel.
Solar panels don’t generate at night, and produce most of their power for a few hours around midday, so as with vehicle engines their actual power output is well below their maximum theoretical level. We’ve assumed a global figure for this so-called capacity factor of 17%, based on the median of the International Energy Agency’s estimates for China, the EU, India and the US.
Footnotes
A small but crucial share of the world’s petroleum goes into non-energy products such as plastics, cosmetics, asphalt and lubricants. But the vast majority is ultimately burned for fuel.
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Refineries do make use of waste heat to power some of their processes, but the same isn’t true of vehicle engines.
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Solar panels don’t generate at night, and produce most of their power for a few hours around midday, so as with vehicle engines their actual power output is well below their maximum theoretical level. We’ve assumed a global figure for this so-called capacity factor of 17%, based on the median of the International Energy Agency’s estimates for China, the EU, India and the US.
View in article