There is of course a lot of media hype about the “energy transition”, lots of politicians who see this as a vote-getting issue even if they don’t understand it, and a whole cottage industry of consultants and companies has arisen ready and eager to cash in on the subsidies offered and publishing a blizzard of optimistic reports.
Here is the reality: the world, especially the first world, and most especially the U.S., has built a culture and economy based on the profligate use of cheap energy, mostly hydrocarbon-based (coal, oil, gas) energy. The rest of the world aspires to the same energy-intensive lifestyle. The current US per-capita energy use (electricity plus transportation, heating and cooking, all converted to kWh) is about 77,000 kWh. A European uses about 44,000 kWh per year, while in India the current per-capita use is about 7,000 kWh. Between 1950 and 2010 the US essentially doubled the per-capita use of energy. The US, with 4% of the world’s population, now uses about 17% of the world’s total power.
According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), to limit global warming to 1.5°C we need by 2050 to reduce coal use by 95%, oil by 60% and gas by 45%. So roughly, we in the US need to cut our hydrocarbon-based energy use in half or more by 2050, to a level somewhat below the current European per-capita level. And of course, the rest of the world has to make corresponding changes.
How are we doing? Actually, as the current 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy shows, world hydrocarbon production is increasing, despite the slowdown from COVID and the Ukraine war. Global oil consumption increased by nearly 2.9 million barrels per day in 2022, natural gas consumption remained steady in 2022, and coal consumption increased about 0.6%, largely because of increases in coal production in China, India, and Indonesia. Since 2000 the world has doubled its coal-fired power capacity, mostly due to China and India.
And, predictably, no one in the US is talking about actually reducing our personal power demands, just shifting it to renewables. Hence the (questionable) push from gasoline cars to electric cars. Since 60% of US electricity is generated from hydrocarbons, 20% of it from coal, current electric cars are actually running on average 1/5 of the time on dirty coal, polluting worse than gasoline. Hybrid cars with regenerative braking, on the other hand, may make sense for local travel, which accounts for most auto travel in the US. (52% of trips are less than 3 miles. Just 2% are 50 miles or more), and of course, for those who can afford it, electric cars are great for virtue signaling.
Despite the hype, wind and solar power alone, while they can certainly help, cannot support this energy-profligate lifestyle for good technical, physical and economic reasons. Nuclear energy (fission energy) might possibly support it technically (though there are some challenges there, especially for processes that actually require hydrocarbons as feedstock), but for cultural and economic reasons building out enough nuclear power seems unlikely. Fusion energy remains a distant dream.
So what is left? Significantly reducing our energy demand worldwide is what is left. What does that really mean? There is no single thing we can eliminate to solve this problem. We need to eliminate lots of things, gaining perhaps 1% or 3% or 5% here and there until the total is about half of our current energy use. Here are just some of the implications:
Stop buying so much “stuff” that has to be shipped around the world. It’s not just the shipping of the final product, it’s also the shipping of subassemblies and components back and forth around the world to get to a final assembly point. And of course it is the initial manufacturing use of energy. Give up our high-fi systems, our foreign-made clothes and shoes, furniture and home products that aren’t locally made, our cell phones and TVs, and all the stuff we get (and is shipped) from Amazon. The shipping industry uses about 5% of global oil production, manufacturing uses about 38% of global hydrocarbon production.
Stop building new buildings, roads, bridges, etc. Reuse and repurpose existing buildings instead. Cement production accounts for about 2% of global energy production, steel production accounts for about the same. Production and road construction with hot asphalt is estimated to account for about 5% of global greenhouse gases.
Change our diet. Stop eating meat (livestock farming contributes about 15% of global greenhouse gas production). Eat only locally-sourced foods to reduce the shipping, meaning eat only plant foods that happen to be in season locally. Eat only fresh foods to limit the use of refrigeration.
Stop using the internet and cell phones. Individual phones and computers don’t account for much energy use, but the vast server farms that support the internet and phone services use enormous amounts of energy. The U.S. DOE estimates a typical data center uses about 50 megawatts of power. That’s enough to power 80,000 typical homes for one year. We have over 2500 such data centers in the US alone, and are adding over 100 new ones per year, again just in the US.
Give up flying anywhere. Flying accounts for about 3.5% of global greenhouse emissions (and certainly give up private jets and motor yachts). And in fact give up vacation trips altogether. Take vacations locally. Give up destination weddings. Use only local doctors and hospitals for medical care.
Give up all night life, turn off the lights and go to sleep when the sun sets. In the US about 5% (213 billion kWh per year) of total electricity generated is used to power lights at night, both in residences and in industry and on streets.
Give up our cars, or at least get down to only one small car per family, and certainly give up any RVs,,SUVs, and trucks (unless your work requires a truck). Increase the density of public transportation. Rebuild all our country to be less car-dependent and better suited to public transportation (ie -co-locate housing, shopping and work locations in urban enters and empty out the suburbs)– a wildly expensive proposition.
In winter keep the home heat at 65 or below and wear heavy clothes indoors. In summer give up air conditioning. Air conditioning and refrigeration is estimated to consume about 20% of global electricity.
Can we manage this, and perhaps other similar culture shifts? Consider how hard it is just to get people just to change their diet. What will it take to get them to give up their cars, their cell phones, their steaks and burgers, their access to Google and the internet, their air conditioning, their nice suburban home? What will be the impact on the economy? How many jobs will be lost? How will costs increase when the economy of scale is lost? How many products will simply disappear because they require a wider market to be worth making? And what politician is going to try to peddle this message?
The point I am making is that the real solution to global warming is not technical – better wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. It is cultural – get everyone (including especially the relatively wealthy in the world, which includes most of us in the US) to give up our current energy-intensive lifestyles and learn to live a much leaner life. And because it is cultural, the solution is much harder to achieve, perhaps even impossible.
Some references for further study;
Renewables vs Hydrocarbons: The Energy Reality
The Energy Transition Confronts Reality
IPCC Sixth Assessment (2022)
The Energy Transition Has Not Yet Started
Statistical Review of World Energy
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