The data collected in this year’s edition includes energy data for 2020 – one of the most turbulent years the world has ever seen. This year’s Review captures the dramatic impact the global pandemic had on energy markets and how the ‘year of COVID’ may help shape future global energy trends.
Both primary energy consumption and carbon emissions from energy use fell at their fastest rate seen since the Second World War, while renewable energy continued its trajectory of strong growth, with wind and solar power recording their largest ever annual increase.
Spencer Dale, bp’s chief economist, said: “For the Review – as for so many of us – 2020 will go down as one of the most surprising and challenging years in its life. The global lockdowns had a dramatic impact on energy markets, particularly on oil, whose transport-related demand was crushed.
“Encouragingly, 2020 was also the year the share of renewables in global power generation recorded its fastest ever increase – a growth that came largely at the expense of coal-fired generation. These trends are exactly what the world needs to see as it transitions to net zero – strong growth in renewables crowding out coal.
“The importance of the past 70 years pales into insignificance as we consider the challenges facing the energy system over the next 10, 20, 30 years. To reach net zero, the level of ambition shown by countries and companies needs to translate into significant, sustained falls in emissions. Everyone, from business to governments to consumers, has a role to play in delivering that.”
bp’s chief executive Bernard Looney added: “This year’s Review provides all of us with the objective and timely data needed to make sense of the most tumultuous events affecting energy markets in any of the past seven decades.
“I sincerely believe that companies like bp with net zero ambitions, coherent plans, and near, medium and long-term aims – companies which are committed to ‘greening’ – have a hugely significant part to play in achieving the Paris goals. Yes, the world needs more low-carbon companies. But maybe more than anything, it also needs existing energy companies to decarbonise and in so doing use their scale and expertise to help bring about the deep and complex rewiring and replumbing of the global energy system that the world wants and needs to see over the next 30 years.
“It will take producers and consumers, as well as companies, governments, and society, all working together to bring about the necessary change.”
Since it was first published in 1952, the Statistical Review has been a source of objective, comprehensive data and analysis to help industry, governments and commentators understand and interpret developments in global energy markets.
Over this time, the Review has provided insights into some of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the global energy system, including the Suez Canal crisis in 1956, the oil embargo of 1973, the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
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Our most recent Annual Report and Form 20-F is available on our website at www.bp.com, or can be obtained from the SEC by calling 1-800-SEC-0330 or on its website at www.sec.gov