Switching World to Renewable Energy Will Cost $62T, Payback Would Take 6 Years

The thing is, despite what extinction rebellion et. al. tell us, the global economy is moving to renewables pretty much full speed. It's just that that same economy has so much inertia that it will take decades to make that switch. But the second half will not take nearly as long as the first.

With that out of the way, the glaring miss here is that gasoline or coal burned at utility scale is quite efficient and while far from perfect, that is a different calculation than, wow somehow like there are hundreds of millions of gas cars everywhere. That's pretty inefficient.

Also with all this renewable energy, how are you going to light up the forges that need massive amounts of energy to make the materials for wind capture? Will lithium, iron, and phosphate mining really do less harm at scale than fracking and mining for coal? If shipping and logistics use more energy than individual consumers, and consumers buy their home energy from their utility companies, why are you trying to hard sell individuals if you actually have a solid value proposition for utilities and shipping/logistic companies? They have the assets to leverage for loans and investments to deploy new means of energy at scale. Why do you need to preach to individuals that their gas car is evil, when your economies of scale at the corporate level should make a consumer option more affordable and accessible?

However, let's take a look at it another way.

If it would take $62T to convert to 100% renewable, how much would it cost to get to 80% renewable?

I'm trying to get a read on how much of the current energy is from renewables, and I'm seeing figures in the 8-30%. It's a big spread, but it is showing how far we may have come.

An article that talks strictly about renewables is fine (just not great); that's their right to write such an article if they want, but the transition to renewables should be understood in the context of the encompassing transition to sustainability. Sustainable solutions would, for example, include some reasonable and needed use of fossil fuels, for certain situations where they are still the best solution even accounting for their adverse effects.

We have no effective way of storing energy. If you only want energy on sunny windy days during daytime, this is fine. Enjoy the power going out at night and when the wind slows down.

Hopefully we will get much cheaper storage and production soon, but it's not completely viable now.

We literally don't have the tech nor capacity for make this transition: - we dont have the rare earth minerals - we don't have the metals - with exception of nuclear all these alternatives are extremely inefficient.

It takes years of sustained exponential demand to even let capacity catch up and thats if we can even feasible find new reserves (for rare earth).

Let alone the game theoretic situation where u can only achieve this with a tyranny. It will cost significantly less to adapt and change..

This statement really annoyed me and undermined their credibility