Every June it happens more or less the same way. British Petroleum (BP) publishes its Statistical Review of World Energy, venting out a few catchy phrases that the mainstream media mindlessly repeats. This time the catch-phrase was: "overall energy consumption is growing faster than renewable energies put together". This discourse is naturally convenient to those set on promoting fossil fuels and/or detracting renewable energy. But is BP really a trustworthy source on the matter?
BP's statistics are a rare source of energy data available for free to the public. For that reason I used it to study fossil fuels for several years. However, its quality visibly degraded with time, and by 2010, as it become impossible to reconcile consumption and extraction figures, I stopped using it. If the BP's data is unreliable regarding fossil fuels, should it be taken as such on renewable energy? That is what this short note tries to find out.
