Getting Real About "Green" Energy

Getting Real About Green Energy. Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com, Oct. 4, 2019.

An honest analysis of what it can't promise...



I want to be optimistic about the future. I really do.

But there’s virtually no chance of the world transitioning gently to an alternative energy-powered future.

These Are The ‘Good Old Days’

I’m often asked where I stand on wind, solar and other alternative energy sources.

My answer is: I love them. But they’re incapable of enabling our society to smoothly slip over to powering itself by other means.

They’re not going to “save us”.

Some people are convinced otherwise. If we can just fight off the evil oil companies, get our act together, and install a national alternative energy system infrastructure, we’ll be just fine. Meaning that we”ll be able to continue to live as we do today, but powered fully by clean renewable energy.

That’s just not going to happen. At least, not without a lot of painful disruption and sacrifice.

The top three reasons why are:

• Math
• Human behavior
• Time, scale, & cost

I walk through the detail below. I’m doing so to debunk the magical thinking behind the current “Green Revolution” because I fear it offers a false promise.

Look, I’m a huge fan of renewable energy. And I’m 1,000% in favor of weaning the world off of its toxic addiction to fossil fuels.

But we have to be eyes wide open about our future prospects. Deluding ourselves with “feel good” but unrealistic expectations about green energy will result in the same sort of poor decisions, malinvestment, and crushed dreams as fossil-based system has.

As we constantly repeat here at Peak Prosperity: Energy is everything.

Without as much available, the future is going to be exceptionally difficult compared to the present. Which is why I call the time we’re living in now The Good Old Days.

Now is the time to prepare for what’s coming. To acquire the skills, the land, and make the financial, physical and emotional adjustments in your lifestyle that will boost your resilience for a future of less and more expensive energy.

Math

Let’s start with the math.

Suppose we agree on the goal to entirely replace fossil fuel energy by 2050. (We’re going to have to do it by some point, because oil, coal and natural gas are all depleting finite resources.)

With 2050 as a starting point we can run some simple math.

We start by converting the three main fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – into a common unit: the “millions of tons of oil equivalent” or Mtoe.

A million tons of oil = 1 Mtoe, obviously. And there’s an amount of coal, if burned that has the same energy as 1 Mtoe. Ditto for natural gas. If we add up all of the fossil fuels burned in a given year, then we can express that as a single number in the many thousands of Mtoe.

Roger Pilke has run the math for us in his recent article in Forbes:

In 2018 the world consumed 11,743 Mtoe in the form of coal, natural gas and petroleum. The combustion of these fossil fuels resulted in 33.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. In order for those emissions to reach net-zero, we will have to replace about 12,000 Mtoe of energy consumption expected for 2019.
(Source)

So that’s our starting point. Whatever future alternative energy systems get installed will have to replace around 12,000 Mtoe.

Now, it bears noting that 12,000 Mtoe is a truly massive amount of energy.

To visualize this, let’s use gigantic oil-bearing cargo ships. Here’s a picture of the Ultra Large Crude Carrier, the Oceania, which can hold a bit more than 3,000,000 barrels of oil at a time. That’s a staggeringly massive ship. Ginormous.



We’d need 2.4 of these massive ships to hold 1 Mtoe. Which means we’d need a fleet of approximately 30,000 of these tankers to hold 12,000 Mtoe. (By the way, there are currently only 4 ships in the world of this size).

Because these truly gigantic ships are 1,246 feet in length, our fleet of 30,000 would stretch over 7,000 miles if parked stern to nose in a line.

Are you getting a sense yet for how mind-bogglingly large the world’s annual fossil energy consumption is?

So, what would it take to replace those 12,000 Mtoe with alternative fuels by 2050?

Pilke answers that for us:

Another useful number to know is that there are 11,051 days left until January 1, 2050. 

To achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions globally by 2050 thus requires the deployment of >1 Mtoe of carbon-free energy consumption (~12,000 Mtoe/11,051 days) every day, starting tomorrow and continuing for the next 30+ years. 

Achieving net-zero also requires the corresponding equivalent decommissioning of more than 1 Mtoe of energy consumption from fossil fuels every single day.

Yikes! More than 1 Mtoe of alt-energy systems would have to be installed every single day? Between now and Jan 1 2050? No resting on Sundays even?

But that’s only half of the story.

We’d also have to decommission and retire an equivalent 1 Mtoe amount of still-functioning fossil fuel property, plant and equipment. Do you have any idea how much money and embedded capital is contained in all the world’s current energy infrastructure — including our cars and homes — that’s built around fossil fuel use?

Somehow, the world would have to replace the equivalent of the energy contained within 2.4 Ultra Massive crude ships. Every. Single. Day. For 11,000 days straight, without missing a single day. A 7,000 mile long cargo train of ultra massive ships retired at the rate of 2.4 per day for the next 30 years.

What would that take? Again from Pilke:

So the math here is simple: to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, the world would need to deploy 3 [brand new] nuclear plants worth of carbon-free energy every two days, starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050. At the same time, a nuclear plant’s worth of fossil fuels would need to be decommissioned every day, starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050. 

I’ve found that some people don’t like the use of a nuclear power plant as a measuring stick. So we can substitute wind energy as a measuring stick. Net-zero carbon dioxide by 2050 would require the deployment of ~1500 wind turbines (2.5 MW) over ~300 square miles, every day starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050.

So to dismantle that 7,000 mile long conga-line of ultra massive crude carriers, we’d have to build and commission 3 new nuclear plants every 2 days. Or 1,500 very large wind towers installed across 300 square miles every day.

It’s just not going to happen.

Even if the world got totally, completely serious about doing this, it remains an exceedingly improbable task. That’s being kind, too. When something strays this far over the line of improbability, it’s really an impossibility.

Oh, and I started writing this article on Tuesday. Since it’s now Friday, that means we’re already behind by 9 nuclear plants. We’ll need to hurry to catch those up.

But maybe you’re still holding out hope. If all the countries of the world suddenly made this their #1 priority, could we have a shot?

This brings us to complicating factor #2: human behavior.

Human Behavior

One huge reason that an easy, seamless transition to alternative energy won’t happen is because our biological wiring is terrible at responding to such big, complex, long-range predicaments.

A snarling saber-toothed tiger crouching right in front of us? That we know how to respond to. Filling our bellies from a ripe fruit tree to sate our hunger? We’re absolutely wired for solving problems like that.

But organizing ourselves against a faceless distant threat? Not in our wiring. Trying to convince people to make sacrifices today for no immediate or visible reward? Really not at all in our biological wheelhouse.

When united towards a common goal, humans can do amazing things. Simply brilliant and astonishing works exist that inform us of what’s possible when we set our collective minds to a shared mission. The great pyramids. Towering middle-age cathedrals. The Great Wall of China. The Apollo missions.

But far less is possible when we’re fractured and divided. As we are now. We’re currently having trouble trying to agree on which gender(s) should use a particular bathroom. Or being civil when standing in line for a discounted TV.

Given this, it’s impossible to imagine the increasingly-divided populations in the UK, France, America or Germany agreeing on much of anything, let alone a gigantic and massively expensive energy transition.

Each country is currently struggling with its own brew domestic social and political problems (of their own making, I should add). They have neither the appetite or ability to take on the much more challenging task of a 30-year global energy infrastructure re-build.

Making this energy transition will require an enormous diversion of effort – away from this and towards that.

It will be hard. It will take a lot of political capital and expert leadership. Huge pain and suffering will result as entire industries are shut down and new ones are started up.

Just drive through any former mill or mining region and you can still see the bitter remnants of its abandoned industries. Some have not yet recovered, even hundreds of years after the initial loss.

When the coal mines died out, so did the cities:


Centralia PA

When the mills left, so did the vitality.


Lowell MA
(Source)

With an energy transition away from fossil fuels, there will be similar examples of ruined economic ideas littering the land. Places where refineries now stand with their thousands of jobs will become rusting derelicts. Ditto for hundreds of other dependent businesses, ranging from Jiffy Lube to Boeing to gas stations to airports.

Which brings us to complicating factor #3: time, scale and cost

Time, Scale and Cost

Suppose for a moment that we did decide This is it!, and began building 3 nuclear plants per day in earnest.

First: how much would that cost? Who would pay for it?

Second: are there enough skilled workers and manufacturing facilities to make and install all of the components?

Third: even after these nuclear plants were all up and running, is there even enough Uranium in the world to fuel the eventual 16,500 new, additional plants?

The answer to each of these questions is some form of “no, that isn’t really possible.”

In the third case, the entire amount of all known Uranium reserves are only currently sufficient to supply the existing ~400 reactors in the world of 90 years.

If we expanded the number of reactors by a factor of 41 (16,500/400), that 90 years of supply shrinks to just a bit over 2 years. Nobody is going to build a nuclear plant with just 2 years of Uranium around to supply it. (that said, I am a fan of researching the use and installation of Thorium reactors, which I’ve explored before)

Similar supply constraints arise if we calculate out the amount of resources required to build the amount of wind towers or solar panels that could replace these nuclear plants. The costs are staggering, the global resources too limited. There aren’t enough new hydro dam sites to even make a dent.

Also complicating things, each of these so-called alternative energy systems requires a huge amount of fossil fuels to mine, manufacture, install and maintain. The world has yet to see a single windmill or solar panel that was mined, manufactured and installed without using fossil energy.

The Vision We Need

The answer to the post-fossil fuel era is not an alt-energy system capable of providing us with the same way of life. Because that’s just not feasible.

The answer lies in doing more with less.

We already know how to build structures that will last for hundreds of years and which require almost no energy to operate for heating and cooling. But those are very rarely built today, because they cost more.

We already know how to build small, light vehicles and operate mass transit very energy effectively. But society prefers its huge cars and trucks, because they’re affordable (while debt is cheap) and convenient.

We already know how to grow more food, closer to home, that is far healthier for humans and the ecosystem. But it’s still only done on a boutique basis because it costs a little bit more.

This is why people need to be told the truth and inspired with a vision that we can all share. With a grand cause, anything is possible. Without one, nothing will be done.

The vision we need will align what needs to be done with proper incentives to get those things done. We’ll be told the truth, what is expected, and our role in the project. It will imbue many lives with a sense of meaning and purpose that are currently missing in the lives of most people.

However, given the enormity of the challenge, and the fractured, divisive social and political landscape, you really need to plan for nothing happening. That no vision is coming along, no savior will appear, and that we’re going to merrily continue along until we run out of time and resources to do anything more than regret our mistakes.

Odds are we’re going to keep heading straight along our current trajectory. Until — clunk! — we go right over the edge.

Conclusion

Given the math, human tendencies, and the issues pertaining to time, scale and cost, the current green energy movement currently is little more than hot air. It’s just not going to happen in time.

We’re nowhere close to being able to build out the massive energy projects required. The equivalent of 3 nuclear plants every two days for the next 30 years? That’s a total pipe dream.

We lack the political will, the cultural readiness, the proper narrative. Even the appropriate resources.

Beyond those concerns, nearly everything about how we heat, move, cool and manufacture the components of our modern lives will have to be refashioned (and possibly jettisoned) as part of that project.

Such an ambitious undertaking has no historical analog. It’s a ridiculously complex set of problems (which have solutions) and predicaments (which don’t). It’s exactly the sort of situation that politicians will avoid as long as possible, after which it will be too late to do very much about it.

Which means you need to adjust your expectations and investment of your money and energy, accordingly. The entire world — which is utterly dependent on infinite growth — is only years away from grasping the impossibility of that approach. When it does, everything will change. Quickly.

This is why Peak Prosperity spends so much time and effort alerting people to these realities, and then helping them take informed individual actions that align with the future we all see (or feel) coming.



In Part 2: Reality Shock we examine the most compelling evidence I know of for why taking matters into our own hands is so important now. It explains everything from slowing global economic growth, to the widening wealth gap, to the rising rejection of globalization and the increasingly desperate mad dash (at any cost) for what remains of natural resources.

Humanity is in the early innings of a great transition. Losing access to abundant energy will change things more than you or I can appreciate at this time.

This future is barreling towards us at a furious — and accelerating — pace. Get prepared.

Rethinking Renewable Mandates & Why Stimulus Can't Fix Our Energy Problems

Rethinking Renewable Mandates. Gail Tvergerg, Our Finite World. July 31, 2019.

Powering the world’s economy with wind, water and solar, and perhaps a little wood sounds like a good idea until a person looks at the details. The economy can use small amounts of wind, water and solar, but adding these types of energy in large quantities is not necessarily beneficial to the system.

While a change to renewables may, in theory, help save world ecosystems, it will also tend to make the electric grid increasingly unstable. To prevent grid failure, electrical systems will need to pay substantial subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear electricity providers that can offer backup generation when intermittent generation is not available. Modelers have tended to overlook these difficulties. As a result, the models they provide offer an unrealistically favorable view of the benefit (energy payback) of wind and solar.

...

...

[3] Today’s wind, water, and solar are not part of what Wrigley called the organic economy. Instead, they are utterly dependent on the fossil fuel system.

The name renewables reflects the fact that wind turbines, solar panels, and hydroelectric dams do not burn fossil fuels in their capture of energy from the environment.

Modern hydroelectric dams are constructed with concrete and steel. They are built and repaired using fossil fuels. Wind turbines and solar panels use somewhat different materials, but these too are available only thanks to the use of fossil fuels. If we have difficulty with the fossil fuel system, we will not be able to maintain and repair any of these devices or the electricity transmission system used for distributing the energy that they capture.

[4] With the 7.7 billion people in the world today, adequate energy supplies are an absolute requirement if we do not want population to fall to a very low level. 

There is a myth that the world can get along without fossil fuels. 

...

[5] Wind, water and solar only provided about 11% of the world’s total energy consumption for the year 2018. Trying to ramp up the 11% production to come anywhere close to 100% of total energy consumption seems like an impossible task.

Figure 2. World Energy Consumption by Fuel, based on data of 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

Let’s look at what it would take to ramp up the current renewables percentage from 11% to 100%. The average growth rate over the past five years of the combined group that might be considered renewable (Hydro + Biomass etc + Wind&Solar) has been 5.8%. Maintaining such a high growth rate in the future is likely to be difficult because new locations for hydroelectric dams are hard to find and because biomass supply is limited. Let’s suppose that despite these difficulties, this 5.8% growth rate can be maintained going forward.

To increase the quantity from 2018’s low level of renewable supply to the 2018 total energy supply at a 5.8% growth rate would take 39 years. If population grows between 2018 and 2057, even more energy supply would likely be required. Based on this analysis, increasing the use of renewables from a 11% base to close to a 100% level does not look like an approach that has any reasonable chance of fixing our energy problems in a timeframe shorter than “generations.”

...

[6] A major drawback of wind and solar energy is its variability from hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and season-to-season. Water energy has season-to-season variability as well, with spring or wet seasons providing the most electricity.

...

...

Why stimulus can’t fix our energy problems. Gail Tverberg. July 10, 2019.

Economists tell us that within the economy there is a lot of substitutability, and they are correct. However, there are a couple of not-so-minor details that they overlook:

• There is no substitute for energy. It is possible to harness energy from another source, or to make a particular object run more efficiently, but the laws of physics prevent us from substituting something else for energy. Energy is required whenever physical changes are made, such as when an object is moved, or a material is heated, or electricity is produced.
  
• Supplemental energy leverages human energy. The reason why the human population is as high as it is today is because pre-humans long ago started learning how to leverage their human energy (available from digesting food) with energy from other sources. Energy from burning biomass was first used over one million years ago. Other types of energy, such as harnessing the energy of animals and capturing wind energy with sails of boats, began to be used later. 

...

Many people appear to believe that stimulus programs by governments and central banks can substitute for growth in energy consumption. Others are convinced that efficiency gains can substitute for growing energy consumption. My analysis indicates that workarounds, in the aggregate, don’t keep energy prices high enough for energy producers. Oil prices are at risk, but so are coal and natural gas prices. We end up with a different energy problem than most have expected: energy prices that remain too low for producers. Such a problem can have severe consequences.

...

[1] Despite all of the progress being made in reducing birth rates around the globe, the world’s population continues to grow, year after year.
Figure 1. 2019 World Population Estimates of the United Nations. Source: https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/


Advanced economies in particular have been reducing birth rates for many years. But despite these lower birth rates, world population continues to rise because of the offsetting impact of increasing life expectancy. The UN estimates that in 2018, world population grew by 1.1%.

[2] This growing world population leads to a growing use of natural resources of every kind.

There are three reasons we might expect growing use of material resources:

(a) The growing world population in Figure 1 needs food, clothing, homes, schools, roads and other goods and services. All of these needs lead to the use of more resources of many different types.

(b) The world economy needs to work around the problems of an increasingly resource-constrained world. Deeper wells and more desalination are required to handle the water needs of a rising population. More intensive agriculture (with more irrigation, fertilization, and pest control) is needed to harvest more food from essentially the same number of arable acres. Metal ores are increasingly depleted, requiring more soil to be moved to extract the ore needed to maintain the use of metals and other minerals. All of these workarounds to accommodate a higher population relative to base resources are likely to add to the economy’s material resource requirements.

(c) Energy products themselves are also subject to limits. Greater energy use is required to extract, process, and transport energy products, leading to higher costs and lower net available quantities.

Somewhat offsetting these rising resource requirements is the inventiveness of humans and the resulting gradual improvements in technology over time.

What does actual resource use look like? UN data summarized by MaterialFlows.net shows that extraction of world material resources does indeed increase most years.

Figure 2. World total extraction of physical materials used by the world economy, calculated using weight in metric tons. Chart is by MaterialFlows.net. Amounts shown are based on the Global Material Flows Database of the UN International Resource Panel. Non-metallic minerals include many types of materials including sand, gravel and stone, as well as minerals such as salt, gypsum and lithium.

[3] The years during which the quantities of material resources cease to grow correspond almost precisely to recessionary years.

The one recessionary period that is missed by the Figure 2 flat periods is the brief recession that occurred about 2001.

[4] World energy consumption (Figure 4) follows a very similar pattern to world resource extraction (Figure 2).

Figure 4. World Energy Consumption by fuel through 2018, based on 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Quantities are measured in energy equivalence. “Other Renew” includes a number of kinds of renewables, including wind, solar, geothermal, and sawdust burned to provide electricity. Biofuels such as ethanol are included in “Oil.”

Note that the flat periods are almost identical to the flat periods in the extraction of material resources in Figure 2. This is what we would expect, if it takes material resources to make goods and services, and the laws of physics require that energy consumption be used to enable the physical transformations required for these goods and services.

[5] The world economy seems to need an annual growth in world energy consumption of at least 2% per year, to stay away from recession.

There are really two parts to projecting how much energy consumption is needed:

1. How much growth in energy consumption is required to keep up with growing population?
2. How much growth in energy consumption is required to keep up with the other needs of a growing economy?

Regarding the first item, if the population growth rate continues at a rate similar to the recent past (or slightly lower), about 1% growth in energy consumption is needed to match population growth.

To estimate how much growth in energy supply is needed to keep up with the other needs of a growing economy, we can look at per capita historical relationships:

...

[6] In the years subsequent to 2011, growth in world energy consumption has fallen behind the 2% per year growth rate required to avoid recession.

...

[7] The growth rates of oil, coal and nuclear have all slowed to below 2% per year since 2011. While the consumption of natural gas, hydroelectric and other renewables is still growing faster than 2% per year, their surplus growth is less than the deficit of oil, coal and nuclear.

...

[8] The economy needs to produce its own “demand” for energy products, in order to keep prices high enough for producers. When energy consumption growth is below 2% per year, the danger is that energy prices will fall below the level needed by energy producers.

...

...

Observations and Conclusions


Perhaps the best way of summing up how my model of the world economy differs from other ones is to compare it to other popular models.

The Peak Oil model says that our energy problem will be an oil supply problem. Some people believe that oil demand will rise endlessly, allowing prices to rise in a pattern following the ever-rising cost of extraction. In the view of Peak Oilers, a particular point of interest is the date when the supply of oil “peaks” and starts to decline. In the view of many, the price of oil will start to skyrocket at that point because of inadequate supply.

To their credit, Peak Oilers did understand that there was an energy bottleneck ahead, but they didn’t understand how it would work. While oil supply is an important issue, and in fact, the first issue that starts affecting the economy, total energy supply is an even more important issue. The turning point that is important is when energy consumption stops growing rapidly enough–that is, greater than the 2% per year needed to support adequate economic growth.

The growth in oil consumption first fell below the 2% level in 2005, which is the year that some observers have claimed that “conventional” (that is, free flowing, low-cost) oil production peaked. If we look at all types of energy consumption combined, growth fell below the critical 2% level in 2012. Both of these issues have made the world economy more vulnerable to recession. We experienced a recession based on prices that were too high for consumers in 2008-2009. It appears that the next bottleneck may be caused by energy prices that are too low for producers.

Recessions that are based on prices that are too low for the producer are the more severe type. For one thing, such recessions cannot be fixed by a simple interest rate fix. For another, the timing is unpredictable because a problem with low prices for the producer can linger for quite a few years before it actually leads to a major collapse. In fact, individual countries affected by low energy prices, such as Venezuela, can collapse before the overall system collapses.

While the Peak Oil model got some things right and some things wrong, the models used by most conventional economists, including those included in the various IPCC reports, are far more deficient. They assume that energy resources that seem to be in the ground can actually be extracted. They see no limitations caused by prices that are too high for consumers or too low for producers. They do not realize that affordable energy prices can actually fall over time, as the economy weakens.

Conventional economists assume that it is possible for politicians to direct the economy along lines that they prefer, even if doing so contradicts the laws of physics. In particular, they assume that the economy can be made to operate with much less energy consumption than is used today. They assume that we collectively can decide to move away from coal consumption, without having another fuel available that can adequately replace coal in quantity and uses.

History shows that the collapse of economies is very common. Collectively, we have closed our eyes to this possibility ever happening to the world economy in the modern era. If the issue with collapsing demand causing ever-lower energy prices is as severe as my analysis indicates, perhaps we should be examining this scenario more closely.

Topic: EVs

Electric vehicles: solution or new problem? Amelia Ajanovic and Reinhard Haas via springer. June 6, 2018.

Abstract 

Since electric vehicles (EVs) have been recognized as a technology that reduces local air pollution while improving transport energy security, they have been promoted in many countries. Yet, mainly due to their high costs, especially in the case of pure battery electric vehicles, and a lack of proper infrastructure, the use of EVs is still very limited. In this paper, some of the major barriers and the future challenges are discussed. The current problems are mainly attributed to two categories: (1) the battery performances and costs, as well as battery production including issue of material availability and (2) environmental benefits of EVs depending on the sources used for the electricity generation and their carbon intensity. The major conclusions are that (1) research and development with respect to batteries has by far the highest priority and (2) it has to be ensured that the electricity used in EVs is generated largely from renewable energy sources.

The Renewable Revolution Has A Lithium Problem. Haley Zaremba, OilPrice.com. Feb. 12, 2019.

Electric cars could be just another ecological disaster. Jonathan Gornall, Asia Times. Oct. 9, 2019.

Topic: Clean Energy

first published April 2017; updated 2020

Morneau budget is down payment on clean energy “dream home”. Clare Demerse, Clean Energy Canada. March 22, 2016.

Is Vaclav Smil a Pessimist or Voice of Uncomfortable Truths? Tracy Durning, Huffington Post. Jun 1, 2015.

EPA: Building solar panels makes global warming worse:
Solar panels increased emissions of a gas 17,200 times more potent than CO2. Andrew Follett, The Daily Caller. Mar, 1, 2017.


The dark side of renewable energy. Liu Hongqiao, earth journalism network. Aug. 25, 2016.

Rare earth metals, hard-to-find materials, with unfamiliar names such as lanthanum, neodymium and europium, are used in wind and solar energy projects, but dwindling supplies could hinder a roll-out of low carbon technologies and slow China's shift away from coal power. 

These compounds, which are highly toxic when mined and processed, also take a heavy environmental toll on soil and water, posing a conundrum for policymakers in China, the world’s biggest producer and consumer of rare earths. 

Confidence in 100% RE plans is poorly justified and may be dangerous. J. M. Korhonen. Jun. 21, 2017.

The recent publication of an unprecedented critique against the so-called “WWS” 100% renewable energy (RE) scenario has re-ignited the debate about the feasibility of renewable only energy scenarios in the United States and abroad. This is a long-overdue debate the world sorely needs, and everyone who has the slightest interest in climate change mitigation should pay careful attention. At stake is nothing less than whether or not our climate policy measures are based on sound science or pie-in-the-sky optimism. 

As many of the critics of 100% RE plans – myself included – have repeatedly pointed out, the problem here is not that 100% RE plans are being developed. We definitively need research that tries to solve the issues related to large-scale deployment of renewable energy sources, and it is a very good thing that such plans are made. Even if the plans themselves never come to fruition, their existence serves to increase the ambition level of other plans and policy proposals; and if it turns out that we can power the planet with nothing else but renewable energy yet limit the environmental and social damages to an acceptable level, I believe we should do so. 

But the burden of proof lies with those who assert that we definitely do not need certain solutions, usually nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage. At this moment, no country on Earth has managed to decarbonize its economy even close to the extent required by climate science. Despite encouraging progress of renewable energy sources, the “new” renewables that would have to shoulder most of the burden in renewable-only decarbonization plans are still a minor fraction of the world’s total energy supply.

A globalised solar-powered future is wholly unrealistic – and our economy is the reason why. Alf Hornborg, The Conversation. Sept. 6, 2019.


Huge Global Study Just Smashed One of The Last Major Arguments Against Renewables. David Nield, Science Alert. March 31, 2019.

Pumped-hydro is one of the best technologies we have for storing intermittent renewable energy, such as solar power, which means these sites could act as giant batteries, helping to support cheap, fully renewable power grids.

The Limits of Clean Energy. Jason Hickel. Foreign Policy. Sept. 6, 2019.

If the world isn’t careful, renewable energy could become as destructive as fossil fuels.