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Fossil fuels could be phased out worldwide in a decade, says new study
The worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade, according to an article published by a major energy think tank in the UK.
Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, believes that the next great energy revolution could take place in a fraction of the time of major changes in the past.
But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns. And that effort must learn from the trials and tribulations from previous energy systems and technology transitions.
In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Research & Social Science, Professor Sovacool analyses energy transitions throughout history and argues that only looking towards the past can often paint an overly bleak and unnecessary picture.
more
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/uos-ffc041516.php
22 replies
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This pdf is a reprint of Smil's 2014 article published in Scientific American, entitled A Global Transition to Renewable Energy Will Take Many Decades. I'm posting a link to the pdf because the SA article is behind a paywall.
The Long Slow Rise of Solar and Wind
That is what well-known advocate Amory Lovins envisaged in 1976. He claimed that by the year 2000, 33 percent of America’s energy would come from many small, decentralized renewable sources. Decades later, in July 2008, environmentalist Al Gore claimed that completely repowering the country’s electricity supply in a single decade would be “achievable, affordable and transformative.” And in November 2009 Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi published “A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030” in Scientific American, presenting a plan for converting the global energy supply entirely to renewables in just two decades.
Yet from 1990 to 2012 the world’s energy from fossil fuels barely changed, down from 88 to 87 percent. In 2011 renewables generated less than 10 percent of the U.S. energy supply, and most of that came from “old” renewables, such as hydroelectric plants and burning wood waste from lumbering operations. After more than 20 years of highly subsidized development, new renewables such as wind and solar and modern biofuels such as corn ethanol have claimed only 3.35 percent of the country’s energy supply.
The slow pace of this energy transition is not surprising. In fact, it is expected. In the U.S. and around the world, each widespread transition from one dominant fuel to another has taken 50 to 60 years. First came a change from wood to coal. Then from coal to oil. The U.S. is going through a third major energy transition right now, from coal and oil to natural gas. Between 2001 to 2012 America’s coal consumption fell by 20 percent, and crude oil was down by 7 percent; at the same time, the consumption of natural gas rose by 14 percent. Yet even though natural gas is abundant, clean and affordable, it will be another decade or two before gas use overwhelms coal consumption, which still generates more than a third of U.S. electricity.
Renewables are not taking off any faster than the other new fuels once did, and there is no technical or financial reason to believe they will rise any quicker, in part because energy demand is soaring globally, making it hard for natural gas, much less renewables, to just keep up.
That is what well-known advocate Amory Lovins envisaged in 1976. He claimed that by the year 2000, 33 percent of America’s energy would come from many small, decentralized renewable sources. Decades later, in July 2008, environmentalist Al Gore claimed that completely repowering the country’s electricity supply in a single decade would be “achievable, affordable and transformative.” And in November 2009 Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi published “A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030” in Scientific American, presenting a plan for converting the global energy supply entirely to renewables in just two decades.
Yet from 1990 to 2012 the world’s energy from fossil fuels barely changed, down from 88 to 87 percent. In 2011 renewables generated less than 10 percent of the U.S. energy supply, and most of that came from “old” renewables, such as hydroelectric plants and burning wood waste from lumbering operations. After more than 20 years of highly subsidized development, new renewables such as wind and solar and modern biofuels such as corn ethanol have claimed only 3.35 percent of the country’s energy supply.
The slow pace of this energy transition is not surprising. In fact, it is expected. In the U.S. and around the world, each widespread transition from one dominant fuel to another has taken 50 to 60 years. First came a change from wood to coal. Then from coal to oil. The U.S. is going through a third major energy transition right now, from coal and oil to natural gas. Between 2001 to 2012 America’s coal consumption fell by 20 percent, and crude oil was down by 7 percent; at the same time, the consumption of natural gas rose by 14 percent. Yet even though natural gas is abundant, clean and affordable, it will be another decade or two before gas use overwhelms coal consumption, which still generates more than a third of U.S. electricity.
Renewables are not taking off any faster than the other new fuels once did, and there is no technical or financial reason to believe they will rise any quicker, in part because energy demand is soaring globally, making it hard for natural gas, much less renewables, to just keep up.
I think Smil is on much firmer ground than Sovacool in this debate.
