Phasing out Fossil Fuels – A Pathetic Delusion (unless we kill the energy demand)
Thirty two years after Fossil Fuels were declared “the enemy”, and the root cause of Climate Change, they still generate 92% of the world’s energy, while Wind and Solar combined are below 4%.
According to IEA “To reach net zero emissions by 2050, annual clean energy investment worldwide will need to more than triple by 2030 to around $4 trillion.” Well, over the past 8 years we managed to increase the annual investment by 62% (from 1.07 to 1.74 trillion).
… and we have achieved a staggering 362% increase in solar and wind power. These are the kind of figures policymakers and media tend to throw at us to show we’re on the right path, and there’s nothing to be worried about. Although it’s a great performance, when put in context, the result is quite insignificant.
From a global perspective, (and sadly, this is the only perspective Climate Change cares about) the renewables’ share in the mix only increased by 3.55% which is nowhere near impressive, not even meaningful, despite the Sisyphean efforts to achieve it.
Although fossil fuels’ share in the mix decreased by 3.53%, their absolute figures continued to soar along with their associated emissions, owing to the increased energy demand. We spend trillions every year, use resources, reallocate vast areas of land to renewables and all we get in exchange is an increase in fossil-fuel-based energy generation. We’re definitely on the wrong path, if Climate Change mitigation we’re after.
So far, the trend of the world energy demand followed that of the population growth. There’s no reason why the corelation between these trends would change going forward. Even if the Green Energy’s rate doubles (to 7% of the total) or triples (to 10.5%) will barely cover the energy demand increase caused by the added population.
There is no way we can build enough renewable energy generators, grids, and storage facilities to meet the entire energy demand. The only way to phase out fossil fuels is by killing their demand by using the energy more efficiently. And in transportation there’s plenty of untapped potential to achieve that. We could get from A to B faster, safer, more comfortable, and affordable than by electric cars, using only a fifth of the energy.