Futurology

Footnotes

1. 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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2. 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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3. 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.

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