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Global fuel consumption will begin to fall at the end of this decade due to electric cars

2023-04-12T10:44:37.573Z


The Bank of America points, at the latest, to 2030 for the demand for gasoline and diesel to begin to decline. Almost one in three new cars in China and one in four in Europe are already plug-in


The progressive advance of the electric car on a global scale will begin to make a dent in the global consumption of gasoline and diesel before the end of this decade.

Bank of America calculates that the global peak in demand for automotive fuel will arrive "between 2028 and 2030", forecasts that are in line with the latest projections from BloombergNEF or the International Energy Agency (IEA).

"The impact of the electric vehicle will be insurmountable," warns a study recently published by the US financial institution.

The other bite to the consumption of both fuels, although lesser, will have to do with the replacement of older and inefficient automobiles by others, also combustion but more modern and with less expense.

In 2023, the global demand for gasoline – the king fuel in light vehicles on a global scale – will grow by 450,000 barrels per day, an increase that the Bank of America sees as highly unlikely to be prolonged in time.

"The global adoption of the electric car reached 14% last year and our estimates suggest that this rate will accelerate in the medium term, causing a peak in the demand for gasoline in 2030," its technicians point out.

In conversation with EL PAÍS, the global head of raw materials and derivatives of the second western entity by capitalization and assets, Francisco Blanch, even advances that date to an indeterminate moment "between 2028 and 2030".

As much as there are those who resist seeing it, the world of transportation is approaching a true revolution that will also shake the foundations of energy as we know it today.

“Transportation is decoupling from oil relatively quickly, and what we are seeing in cars today we will soon see in buses,” Blanch points out.

"We are facing a huge shift, a total paradigm shift: European dealers accumulate delays of between 8 and 12 months waiting for electric ones, and what this means is that there is a lot of demand from drivers."

The value of combustion cars "is already starting to plummet."

And that, he says, is just the beginning: "In the consumer mentality something has begun to change," he notes.

The irruption of the electric car is especially accelerated in China (where they are already 27% of the new vehicles marketed) and in Europe (23%), but little by little it is gaining traction throughout the globe: if the Bank of America, the current penetration of 14% globally will skyrocket to 38% by the end of the decade.

And it will also lead to a radical change in energy supply chains, with a gradual decline in fossil fuels in favor of electricity: their numbers suggest that the peak demand for fuels will occur when 20% of new cars sold in all the world are electric.

“The trend is very clear, and the increase in sales will stabilize the demand for transport fuels in the medium term.

On the other hand, the path does not necessarily have to be linear, and the speed of the transition will depend on the availability of scarce materials, such as lithium, cobalt or copper ”, reads the report of the New York bank.

More than 10 million new electric cars this year

Sales of internal combustion cars (gasoline or diesel) marked their maximum in 2017, according to figures from BloombergNEF, which points to a structural decline in this option.

That year, a total of 86 million of these vehicles were sold, compared to just one million pure electric or plug-in hybrids.

Since then, sales of internal combustion engines have fallen to 69 million, while those connected to the electricity grid are already more than 10 million.

In 2021, the world's still meager fleet of battery-powered cars consumed about 50 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity, less than 0.5% of global consumption, according to the IEA.

Although the demand for crude continued to grow, it did so by 0.3 million barrels per day less than it would have done in its absence.

In 2030, if the scenario of zero net emissions is fulfilled in the middle of this decade, this displacement should be around 7 million barrels per day.

A very considerable figure: today, total world consumption is around 100 million barrels.

The shift has only just begun, especially in advanced economies, where the greater purchasing power allows its citizens to more easily face the extra cost that betting on a battery-powered vehicle still entails.

But not only: the BNEF figures suggest that in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Thailand...), one of the fastest growing regions in the world, a large part of the new registrations will be electric cars.

Also in India.

The fact that fuel consumption continues to grow in the coming years is due, above all, to the enormous number of combustion vehicles sold in recent decades and which will continue to circulate on the roads until their owners choose to replace them.

The global fleet of gasoline and diesel cars, however, should begin to fall at the end of the decade, with its consequent impact on the demand for both fuels.

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Source: elparis

All business articles on 2023-04-12

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