Nuclear. It's the only thing beyond fossil fuels. If we want to somehow retain our standards of living.
And nuclear isn't a magic wand. We either need to suck it up and use plants that can fully burn the fuel (by reprocessing or otherwise) to eliminate long-term waste or we need to come up with something useful to do with the long-term waste. The USA has failed pretty badly on the latter, and the former needs engineering and, as I understand it, some degree of willingness to accept increased proliferation risks.
As the gp said, the objective is maintaining and improving our quality of life. I don't know if solar/wind + storage can do that[1].
[0] Ok, "maybe" this is a high bar, but the point is: unless it gets too cheap to measure, energy will be scarce for large swathes of the world population [1] I honestly don't know. Any pointers to how much energy per capita would be produced in peak renewable?
California: 199 million BTU per capita per year [0] -- 210 gigajoules. Multiplied by 10 billion, that's 2100 exajoules per year (2.1 * 10^21 joules). That's equivalent to steady yearlong consumption of 67 terawatts.
This was the first open-access article I found about global solar generation potential:
https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/sepm/article/view/1218/115...
It states "The current global solar potential technically available was estimated at about 613 PWh/y." That's 70 terawatts. So there is technically enough potential from solar alone, but it would be a tight squeeze. There are also some countries that cannot meet even annualized needs this way because they are densely populated and located in areas with relatively poor solar resources. Belgium and the Netherlands, for example.
Note also that the article says nothing about storage. Storage is the biggest question mark hanging over proposals to fully decarbonize without using nuclear technology. Early news from utility-scale storage implementations is encouraging but there is still a very long way to go.
Finally, note that commercial nuclear power too would have to undergo radical transformations to deliver a steady 67 terawatts of electricity. Breeder reactors would be necessary. Currently there is 1 breeder reactor in the world large enough for commercial electricity production [1]. The proposed follow-up design to this reactor is now on indefinite hold [2]. It would take a bit over 76,000 BN-800 reactors to generate 67 terawatts. The world currently has fewer than 500 operating power reactors.
As a general principle, you should treat any proposed miracle-solution that "just needs a few years of engineering work" with extreme skepticism, whether the claimed miracle is a much better battery or a much better reactor. Most of them die between the press release and the factory floor.
[0] Primary energy, not energy available to do work. But to avoid nitpicking I'm just going to do it The Hard Way and assume 1:1 joule replacement with electricity from non-combustion sources.
The study seems to be using very modest assumptions about how much area can be fitted with solar cells (0% in urban areas??), so I think the conclusion should be that there is enough technical potential from solar alone, and it is not a particularly tight squeeze.
This is what I always thought, but... is that really necessary for nuclear power to play a valuable role in minimizing global warming? Ruining a few places on the planet (even the occasional large area such as Chernobyl) seems far preferable to global warming with the attendant disruptions to agriculture and political and economic stability.
There are better choices than nuclear power, but if we can reduce carbon emissions faster by augmenting them with nuclear power for the next century or so (preferring cleaner choices when we can, but preferring nuclear over fossil fuels) then I don't see why it isn't worth the downsides many times over.
The problem is not what, the problem is how.
We already have plenty imaginary solutions, if we spend enough money, we can do the nuclear, do the wind, solar, water. We have the resources, and I believe we have the knowledge and r&d capacity to make up for any gaps.
I don't have anything else to add, I don't know what else I can do, I get that the technology is not impossible nor utopic... But the sudden switch required by our civilizations and societies surely does look utopic...
...
We could quickly replace the worlds largest, dirtiest shipping container ships with nuclear vessels and make a significant cut in emissions.
Where will all of that saved money go? These chaps see it going into the same old pockets, and so naturally they're racing to get their fingers in the pie. I'd prefer to see all that saved money invested in all life on our planet.
Even people who have a reputation for "knowing better" spread misinformation, like John Oliver, who did a video on nuclear power with a bit essentially saying, "Look at all this nuclear waste we have! It covers a whole football field to three stories!" Without any context of other waste from solar panel manufacturing, or even easy ones like the X billion tons of particulate matter we breathe out of the coal plants.
The other problem is humans are famously bad at estimating risk, combined with the "everything is a profit-investment" mindset we all have. When people say "nuclear is so expensive" what they really mean is "it's hard to turn a profit before twenty years, I want my money back sooner than that, lets build some more gas wells."
We need some kind of national organization, with lots of capital, to take on the initial financial risk and spread it around so no one person is left on the hook in a life-destroying way. Imagine if that organization had a department with decades nuclear operations experience.
(I'm talking about the government, and the Navy, btw)
I wonder what the best way to shift the conversation on nuclear would be. In particular, I wish that environmentalists (and I consider myself one) would adopt a proper risk-based view of nuclear power.
[0] http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/05/14/energy-climate-appendi...
It was very sobering going through and comparing the Fukushima writing to writing from the 70s. It's been a long time since the course, but I'm not surprised by the results whatsoever.
Edit: ha, don’t be mad at me! I want nuclear, I care about the environment.