Renewables became the second-most prevalent U.S. electricity source in 2020
eia.gov
eia.gov
Long term though i guess 30 to 40 years is a reasonable time frame to envision a global economy that becomes net negative.
I have gone from a pessimist to an optimist on this topic. Having said that the incumbents will not give up easily and aggressive goals can only be pursued by fighting their misplaced priorities.
But, concerning your optimism — one of the reasons that renewables have gotten better and cheaper faster than predicted is that smart people decided to work on it. There’s a lot of opportunity in clean energy and climate tech, and working on it full time is a great way to manifest your optimism.
Their exposure to shipping blockades in the south china sea and reliance on oil and gas imports provided a lot of the early impetus for beating down the price.
I wouldn't say I am 100pc invested in clean energy ETFs, but do hold them for ideological reasons.
No need to wait for 10 years, it's already pretty obvious. Look at any solar projection from any major institution 10 years back.
The proponents of wind turbines seem to forget that wind turbines are huge industrial systems. Placing them all over the map in a populated territory in the name of nature sounds a bit like "we had to destroy the village in order to save it". Future generations may shake their heads on current placement of wind turbines just like we shake our heads on our forefathers placing iron smelting industry in the middle of cities.
I can see their appeal in shallow seas around North Germany, Denmark or England, where they can produce a lot of power from constant sea winds and be a bit out of sight and hearing, but people pushing them into Erzgebirge are damaging valuable places for a few megawatts of power.
In Germany we always had very strict laws that regulate how long a house can be shaded by a wind turbine per year (8h/year, 30min/day iirc), only recently politicians started imposing arbitrary distance rules based on wrong information about noise immissions. I'd rather have a wind turbine close to my house than a road, provided I'm not in the flicker-shadow region of the blades.
That sounds far from optimal to me. If sea turbines are, say, five times more efficient and legally/socially non-problematic, why not just cover the sea with them as far as possible?
They're more expensive, require more infrastructure (pylons and electricity lines aren't conflict free either) and there are a lot of conflicts around use of seawaters. And for a country like Germany there simply isn't enough space within the north sea and baltic sea for all the wind power we'll need.
(And to be clear: I'm 100% supportive of offshore wind energy, I just think it's entirely unrealistic to assume that could be a replacement for onshore wind. We need both.)
What exactly is it about a wind turbine within 1000m of your home that bothers you?
As to your question: sound and sight. I definitely believe in smarter urban planning that just does not mash power plants and residential building together.
There are 'activists' everywhere, there are even 'activists' who campaign for the age of consent to be lowered because they want to have sex with 12 year olds. Being an activist is only as positive as the cause and the motives.
No, I want them in reasonable distance from villages and cities. Say, 1 and more km. I do not want to push them into anyone's backyard.
And that is actually entirely possible, unlike with, say, highways or railways that fundamentally connect human habitation with another human habitation. Even Europe has a lot of empty corners.
People don't like their view to change and equate that emotional impact with more substantive impact to nature. Landscape does matter, but not very much in comparison to more pressing matters. I think future generations will shake their heads at our willingness to pander to emotion.
Visit a place than mixes industry and residential sensibly, like Japan before condemning it. Heavy industry is segregated, but light industry isn't.
Also, if electric cars become a thing, you can at least hope that within 10-15 years, environmental damage from major roads will diminish.
I'm sympathetic, I really am, but these small harms need to be weighed against the effects of unchecked climate change!
Electricity is just 20% of energy use. [0] And forecasts for 2040 are set around 28%. Even if electric goes all-renewable, you're still not there if you use non-electric for heating, industrial, air, sea etc.
Second, renewable growth is quite strong now yet there's large increases in energy use and decreases of nuclear. All in all, it appears the share of no/low-carbon energy sources in 1995 (i.e. renewables incl nuclear and hydro) was roughly large as it is today [1], but unfortunately on a much larger total energy consumption. [1] That's absolutely depressing. It seems the trend has finally set in the last few years, but we're a long way from home.
If we're talking 1950, I'd be an optimist. But it seems we're very much on a tipping point. The fact we'll be able to innovate ourselves to low-carbon is something I'm very optimistic about, but in the necessary timeframe... I'm very concerned.
[0] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/share-of-elec...
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
Only after looking at the picture you see the categories are "natural gas", "coal", "renewables", "nuclear", "other".
And the decline of coal vs natural gas is more significant than the rise in renewables.
And if you look at the second graph already in 2019 "renewables" were for some time the "second" source.
I would like to see a more insightful analysis and a better title
Only decreasing burning fossil fuels decreases burning fossil fuels. Focusing the important measure: carbon and toxic pollution emitted will get results.
Whether politically feasible or not, the fastest, most effective way to reduce carbon and pollution emissions is first to close fossil fuel extraction and production, then to solve what problems arise. We'll need less peaker plants and nuclear. People will adjust faster than anyone expects, I'd estimate in weeks to months, not years.
Since the people polluting the most (U.S., Europe, rich people everywhere) aren't using most of their energy for life necessities or even things they'd miss, most Americans can decrease our use 70 percent or more just with low-hanging fruit (source: I've reduced mine over 90 percent and each step improved my life, mostly getting rid of waste and frivolities). We'd have to make sure hospitals, public transit, and some infrastructure keeps powered during the transition, and protect people on the margins, but most people will quickly adjust to flying less, not leaving the a/c on 24/7 six months of the year, eating less meat, etc.
Tldr: 1. Focusing on lowering emissions will result in lowering emissions more than focusing on increasing alternatives.
2. Lowering supply of fossil fuels would create the changes we seek faster than trying to prepare for the changes first, mainly because we waste so much.
We need to crush coal. The entire coal logistics train, from mines, to coal trains, to power plants, to coal export terminals (and replace blast furnaces with DRI/etc). The US has a quarter of the world’s coal, but we’ve got to lock that stuff underground.
The US is now exporting significant amounts of coal to China, whose demand is increasing.
This isn't true at all. Gas is much cheaper per joule than electricity.
Getting six joules requires favourable conditions and a good setup, but the normal expected efficiency is considerably above 100%.
Gas is (normally - I'm on a variable tariff and being paid to consume electricity at the moment) cheaper than electricity per joule, but not so much that it works out cheaper than a heat pump to achieve the same effect.
[0] https://www.eec.org.au/for-energy-users/technologies-2/heat-...
I'll end up getting it anyway when I get an AC system someday, but it'll have to run off solar to be worthwhile.
There is actually a tip-over point. For a given price for gas, and a given price for electricity, each will be more economical at different points because the efficiency of heat pumps (for heating) is a function of the external temperature.
There are calculations that can be done to determine this point:
* https://c03.apogee.net/mvc/home/hes/land/el?utilityname=ever...
* https://masslandlords.net/heat-pump-vs-furnace/
It's not as clear-cut as you make it sound:
We heat with gas. We cool with grid-powered A/C.
As an example, I had a massive old oak tree that needed to come down for safety reasons. I desperately wanted to keep some of the wood from the trunk either to carve a statue or convert to lumber, just so that something from the original tree stayed with us.
None of the professional (i.e. insured) services around could do that; all of them had a contract with a local power company to grind up everything they cut so it could be burned for electricity as part of their "green" commitment (which admittedly also included solar and maybe wind).
I've dabbled a little in woodworking, and AFAIU while there are still people out there willing to do the work for small, one-off jobs, they're few and far between, especially in regions without significant hardwood stocks. Fewer still willing to actually pay you for the privilege.
It also doesn't help that engineered wood products are displacing quality lumber even at the high end of the market. These days a new, solid hardwood floor would probably appear cheap or antiquated to people accustomed to the look of laminated flooring.
Of course, you're right, there's nuance there. If you start with a mature forest, cut it all down, and replant it with seedlings, that's not a steady state (yet) - particularly when you take ecosystem effects into account, I suspect.
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T...