New technologies will determine the pace of decarbonisation
On the one hand, we see President Biden and most major corporations working to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. On the flip side, we see the Heritage Foundation’s “Plan 2025” and Texas politicians desperately trying to revive the “baby drill” efforts of the fossil fuel industry. If the July heat hasn’t convinced these people about global warming, nothing will. True, they now admit that the planet is warming, but they don’t think fossil fuels are the cause. Ultimately, ideology doesn’t matter. Scientific facts matter, and most people understand the realities of global warming. That’s why the number of people working to innovate our energy system and move away from fossil fuels is growing every day. Price, convenience and reliability will allow renewable energy to replace fossil fuels. The technologies we need to complete the transition to renewable energy are not yet available and are still being developed. But the pace of technological innovation is accelerating. Politics and ideology will give way to economic and technological realities.
It doesn’t take a genius to understand the advantages of renewable energy over fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have to be extracted from the earth: this costs money and damages the environment. Then, they have to be transported to where they can be incinerated: this is costly and environmentally damaging. They then have to be burned to generate electricity or heat: this costs money and damages the environment. There are still plenty of fossil fuels left under the earth, but we use them every day, and they are becoming scarcer because of their ancient origins and limited quantities. This means scarcity, which can lead to higher prices (unless demand falls), and we are already familiar with the instability and widespread manipulation of fossil fuel pricing. In contrast, the basic fuels that power solar energy (or its products — wind and waves) are free, and the sun will outlive us humans. Technologies to convert solar energy into electricity or heat are becoming more efficient and cheaper, and technologies to store this intermittent energy are also becoming more efficient, less toxic and cheaper. Fossil fuel prices fluctuate, while renewable energy prices are predictable and not subject to state blackmail. The current century-old power grid is centralized and fragile. Modern energy systems will be decentralized, computer-controlled, cost-effective, more efficient, and more reliable.
Government pushes to decarbonize and spending on technology research and development are helpful. Technologies such as the Internet, GPS, and smartphones are developed by governments, but once commercialized, there is a market demand that drives continuous innovation. While the pace of innovation is unpredictable, it is often faster than anticipated. Just as Malthus misunderstood the role of technology in agriculture, most trend lines for increasing greenhouse gas production underestimate the potential role of innovation. The cost competitiveness of renewable energy relative to fossil fuels continues to increase. Advocates of increased fossil fuel use are promoting a technology and business model that is outdated. Climate policy advocates frustrated with our inability to make rapid progress are likely to take a closer look at the progress that has been made.
Technological transitions have not been smooth, often interrupted by unpredictable events, such as the brutal invasion of Ukraine or an unrealistic US president. However, an examination of the development of renewable energy technologies shows that renewable energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels, and prices are falling rapidly.In an interesting article in the e-journal joule, Matthew C. Ives, Penny Mealy and J.Doyne Farmer Researchers at the Oxford Martin School looked at the competition between fossil fuels and renewables and observed:
“Long-term trends offer clues as to how to resolve this competition: the prices of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas fluctuate wildly, but after accounting for inflation, prices are now very similar to those they were 140 years ago, and No clear long-term trend. In contrast, the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV), wind and batteries has fallen exponentially (roughly) at a rate of almost 10% per year for decades. Since first commercial use in 1958, solar PV The cost of generating electricity has dropped by more than three orders of magnitude.”
Their academic research uses historical data on technology diffusion to develop scenarios for future energy costs. them The conclusion is:
“Rapid decarbonization of the global energy system is critical to addressing climate change, but cost concerns have been a barrier to implementation. Most energy economic models have historically underestimated the deployment rate of renewable energy technologies and overestimated their costs. These The problem has prompted calls for alternative and more reliable technology forecasting methods. Here we use an approach based on a probabilistic cost forecasting method, which has been statistically validated through backtesting of more than 50 technologies. We base our deployment on Probabilistic cost forecasting for solar, wind, batteries, and electrolyzers. We use these methods to estimate future energy system costs and explore how technology cost uncertainty propagates to system costs in three different scenarios. Compared with continuing to use fossil-based A rapid green energy transition could lead to trillions of dollars in overall net savings compared to systems fueled by natural gas – even without accounting for climate damage or climate policy co-benefits.”
While predicting future technological developments is difficult and far from certain, what is striking is the stability of fossil fuel costs and the focus of technological developments in the field to improve our ability to extract fuels from increasingly challenging regions Ability. In contrast, the technological development of renewable energy focuses on taking cost-free energy and making it cheaper to absorb, convert to electricity, and store. The proportion of new power generation facilities from renewable sources is increasing due to cost reductions and government subsidies.according to Susan Tierney and Lori Bird of World Resources Institute:
“Solar and wind farms have dominated new U.S. power plant construction in recent years, while fossil fuel plants, especially coal-fired plants, continue to retire at record rates. In 2019, Wind (9.1GW) and solar (5.3GW) accounted for 62% of all new capacity additions, compared with 8.3GW of natural gas generation and 14GW of coal-fired generation.The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) also predicts that Most of U.S. new electricity generation capacity in 2020 likely to come from wind and solar, new gas-fired power plants are expected to account for less than a quarter of new electricity generation capacity. “
While the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted these trends, they have resumed, and renewables are making up an increasing share of the U.S. energy mix.although promote With thinkers and the fossil fuel industry denigrating renewable energy, the trend line is clear and the future is clear.less clear pace The change. There are a variety of factors that affect the rate of change in our energy system. Technological breakthroughs, while inevitable, are unpredictable. The availability of capital is also a variable, as is the availability and effectiveness of government subsidies. The organizational capacity to provide renewable energy is also far from assured. For some businesses, the transition to renewable energy is a no-brainer. Large chains like Walmart have huge stores with flat roofs and high energy consumption. For Walmart, solar energy is an investment that pays for itself quickly through lower electricity costs. Walmart is well capitalized, and the ROI for renewable energy is better than other uses of capital. For some organizations, the ROI of scarce capital is less favorable. In these cases, new technologies may be needed to stimulate adoption.
Another hurdle to decarbonization is insisting on unrealistic targets, thereby delegitimizing the transition. Goals can be useful symbols, but they can be destructive if they are set too high to be reached or too low to yield any benefit. This transformation needs to be done in stages and must be based on a rigorous assessment of current performance levels. Once this is understood, the focus should be on efforts to improve performance. Practical actions, not symbolic talking points, should guide this shift. In the short term, we continue to need and use fossil fuels. But each year we may use less fossil fuels and more renewable energy. This should be accompanied by microgrids, which can better distribute energy and reduce blackouts. Modern, more efficient energy systems powered by low-cost fuels would be more reliable, cheaper, and have the wonderful side effect of reducing pollution from fossil fuels, including greenhouse gases.
