I recently read this article on climate change from a professor in New Zealand
"To stop continuously worsening climate change, we need to stop burning fossil fuels for energy. That’s a tall order, because fossil fuels provide 84% of all the energy used by human civilisation."
He believes we can all live on "4,000kWh of energy per person per year, less than a tenth of what New Zealanders currently use, and an amount easily supplied by renewable energy."
So far so good. I have been excited about wind/solar on the New Florence blog. You can see an average of 10 entries a year for 15 years here.
But then he provides the sobering reality.
"the only two (low carbon energy sources) with the capacity to scale up to the staggering amount of energy we use are wind and solar. Despite impressive growth (doubling in less than five years), wind provides only 2.2% of all energy, and solar 1.1%."
You think at this point he would tackle the complex issues of why they are not scaling quicker, the cost of transition, how long it would take for that 3% to replace the 84% and who would pay for it. You know, all the practical realities. Nope. Not just him, way too many people talk about the "promised land" but dont address how to get there.
Well, we have a case study over the last decade which has answered some of those questions.
I started pointing out a few years ago that "in spite of spending hundreds of billions of euros on subsidizing renewables, Germany will struggle to meet its 18% renewables target for 2020. The country continues to rely heavily on its coal and lignite, and more recently on natural gas from Russia."
However, most just lauded Angela Merkel as Klimakanzlerin or "climate chancellor". Now that she is out of office, we are starting to see sobering assessments. Here's Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and New Statesman.
The reality is Lufthansa will fly on aviation fuel, the German export engine will rely on tankers which run on bunker fuel, German auto makers will make diesel cars for a long time. Look at this site about carbon intensity (the amount of CO2 produced to generate a unit of electricity - a kilowatt per hour) across Europe. and look how stark Germany looks.
In contrast, for all the negative publicity the US gets, our greenhouse emissions have been steadily dropping. In 2020, they were below 1990 levels for the first time - helped by the pandemic slowdown, for sure, but significantly as many of our utilities have moved from coal to cleaner gas.
Unfortunately, China, India and others are nullifying all the progress being made in the West. China now emits 2.5 times greenhouse gases as the US does. Russia, Indonesia and Brazil together equal the US. India emits as much as all of the EU.
And they are fairly nonchalant about it. Many of my smart Indian friends will say, "but our per capita emissions are not that high". I respond tell a melting iceberg that - total emissions are what matter. Next, they will use the guilt trip. "The West contributed a lot more to global pollution with the Industrial Revolution and other economic progress over the last couple of centuries. It's our turn". My response - you skipped the horse buggy when it came to mobility. You leapfrogged landlines and massively adopted mobile phones. You can similarly leapfrog fossil fuels.
But leapfrog to what?
The answer may come from the carbon intensity chart I pointed to above. Look at how green France, Iceland and Norway look compared to Germany. They have done so with a focus on nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric power respectively.
It is a reminder to all of us to not just look at renewables. We should all be looking at a balanced energy strategy.
We also will need to quit demonizing fossils. Life without fossil fuels will not be a piece of cake. As these authors point out "Before fossil fuels, life was hard and dirty with shorter life expectancies. Thousands of products made from petroleum derivatives used for medications, electronics, plastics, and transportation simply did not exist. Many developing countries still don't have easy access to fossil fuels. With limited transportation systems and few petroleum-based products, they do not enjoy the same opportunities as others."
We are starting to see gas prices skyrocket and this winter we will see high heating costs. Get ready for more such spikes for the next few years. The transition away from fossils - remember the dominant 84% above - will be bumpy.
The less idealistic we are about fossils and renewables, and even less we pin hopes on the West as the mythical Atlas which can carry the whole world on its shoulders, and more realistically we plan for transition with a balanced energy strategy the better.