Wrote up most of this here: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti... but was limited by space to really dig into it!

Ah I must have misremembered. CO2/E is improving and E/GDP is not the opposite direction, but it’s still small enough that the effect is too small to move the whole needle in the right direction.

Normally high income countries, and China is almost a high income country now, see GDP per unit of energy surging as they shift from industry to services. China is going in the opposite direction and the “CO2/GDP” target in the 14FYP is going to be missed.

All the other parts of the Kaya formula look positive:

*Population is falling
*GDP growth/capita is slowing
*CO2/energy is falling
*BUT energy/GDP Is going in a really abnormal direction for an economy at China’s stage of development

But the growth rate of China’s energy consumption over the past five years was almost double the previous five years. The is whether it continues to grow faster than GDP over the next five years and my best guess is, maybe?

Which all underlines the extent to which this was a China story. I think if you modelled a 2015-2020 China emissions pathway and adjusted for even ~60% of the renewables that got built, China emissions peak way earlier and lower.

*CPS overestimated oil consumption by ~4.2mbpd
*On most other areas (ie building emissions, transport emissions) outcomes were somewhere between middle of the road NPS and SDS.
*The big areas where higher-emission scenarios were more accurate were industry and coal.

IMO what is instructive is HOW CPS (and other scenarios) have differed from reality, and in which areas/directions. 2018 was the last WEO to give 2025 estimates, and:

*All scenarios massively underestimated renewable ⚡️, “below 2C” SDS by ~9%, CPS by 30%
*Only the CPS got coal consumption right

I always had “Galtieri biopic starring Noddy Holder” but this is the better answer

Arthur Conan Doyle is a better chronicler of the fin de siècle than Henry James

Have had this song running round my head all day 🥲

Also works for the Vice President