Is anyone seriously proposing a wind turbine monoculture for energy generation?
It does illustrate the specific challenge of this energy transition. If a given energy technology isn’t being mass-produced in factories, it’s basically irrelevant given the scale of what we need to do.
I think they should be, but even if they aren’t, there still is the observation that a kWh of electricity often can produce more of what we really want (light, motion, compute power) than a kWh of oil (about the only thing we can efficiently convert that into is heat)
For example, Google tells me
- petrol is about 12 kWh/kg,
- the modern fiat 500 has a 47l gas tank,
- Tesla sells cars with 50kwh batteries.
Yet, that Fiat doesn’t have ten times the rang of the larger Tesla.
USA setting off nukes and Britain fire bombing Dresden are examples of energy use which is wasteful and polluting. There are always exceptions to one broad indicator, in this example energy usage.
Technology improvement typically brings more efficient use of resources and less pollution. Energy consumption, as one indicator, tracks with increased GDP and increased standard of living.
> It would be wrong to assume that rich countries have only achieved this by offshoring manufacturing overseas – which would simply mean that other countries are consuming this energy on their behalf. Consumption-based energy use – which adjusts for the energy used to produce the goods we import and export – has also plateaued or fallen in many countries. We see this clearly in the chart for Sweden.