Not Because They Are Easy, but Because They Are Hard

Drastically reducing our fossil fuels (FF) use without destroying the world economy and shoving most of us into a life of utter poverty is probably THE most difficult challenge humanity has ever faced.

Those that say this transition will be easy, are making a disservice to humanity. It WON'T be easy. Period.

Today, ~82% of our global total primary energy supply is delivered by fossil fuels. Consequently, the global infrastructure is built around them:
   1. Motor vehicles.
   2. Fueling stations.
   3. Air travel.
   4. Factories.
   5. Power plants.
   6. Pipelines.
   8. Maritime transportation
   9. Building space heating / water heaters
   10. What have you...

Some people believe renewable energy (mainly sun and wind) will "catch fire" just like the Internet and mobile phones did some years ago, but this optimism is misplaced.

Both the Internet, as well as mobile phones gave us the opportunity to do things we could never have done before, on the other hand, a replacement of FF by RE would not provide value to the final consumer, if at all, RE would be more expensive and less flexible. Besides RE, since it is not constant, requires FF most of the time to prop them up when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing*.

The annual capacity factor for solar PV worldwide today is ~15%, which (simplifying) means that 85% of the time something else has to produce the electricity, and that "something" is usually a fossil fuel plant.

We have also been somewhat deceived by "Moore's Law" on how fast technological improvements can take place. Integrated circuits (ICs) today have more than one hundred million more transistors per unit area than those manufactured in the 1960's. However, ICs handle information, not loads of power, so we are talking about very different things. The advances in power production and efficiency move at a snail's pace. Say, if the energy efficiency conversion of high volume solar PV is today ~14% (in other words, the percentage of the sunlight striking the panel that is actually converted to electricity), when will it reach 28%? The answer is probably never.

So, what we are currently asking of humanity is to spend many trillions of dollars to essentially end worse off than today (sure, if everything turns out right, with a lower carbon global economy). However, for the final user low carbon electricity "tastes" the same as FF electricity but is more expensive. We also need to understand that electricity is only a fraction of our total energy consumption and the energy used in transportation and industrial processes is more difficult to replace with low carbon alternatives.

So, bottom line, is the transition possible?

The answer is yes, but it will require sacrifice, more sacrifice and yet more sacrifice.  It would require a massive nuclear build up equivalent to what France already did, but in most of the other countries in the world.

We should, however, differentiate what is possible from what is probable and so far there is nothing in the pipeline, so to speak, that will reduce our absolute use of fossil fuels.

2013 was the all time record for emissions. What will be the results in 2014? In 2015?

The first step to start solving our emissions problem is to confront the brutal truth: whatever we have been doing is NOT working. Our emissions not only are not dropping, they are INCREASING.

Let's stay tuned.

* Some RE lobbyists state that RE is has already achieved grid parity. This is not accurate. Here is why:
http://gnwr1.blogspot.mx/2013/06/grid-parity.html

Fossil Fuels and Our Civilization

I don't want to be tarred and feathered but we have to state some truths out in the open...

Our current civilization was build on top of fossil fuels. Without them we would probably now be living very similar lives to the ones in which our ancestors struggled to survive in 1850.

Almost certainly, today we wouldn't have massive access to cars and air travel (if at all). The world wouldn't be nearly as globalized and thus things would be much more expensive and the choices likewise limited.

Electricity would almost certainly still be a lab curiosity, and thus we wouldn't enjoy air conditioning, elevators, powerful illumination, etc. 

The rest of the technological advances would probably had been delayed for centuries and thus today we would not have computers, the Internet, cell phones, TV, radio, Twitter, you name it.

Below, we can see the global energy use since 1850.

Without fossil fuels we would almost certainly had destroyed our forests just to use their wood as fuel and whales would have been eradicated from the planet. Food production (without mechanization, some fertilizers, etc.) would also be much lower. 

So the way to go back to a world with as low emissions as we had in 1850 is to essentially renounce to all the convienences of our modern civilization and starve six billion persons.

This won't happen. Period. Consequently, our fossil fuel use in the next few decades will, far from decreasing, increase at a consistent pace. In the short / medium term, no disruption of the climate could be worse for humanity than returning to an energy poor society.

Sure, the day of reckoning will come but when people are given the choice between killing their children (through energy scarcity) or killing their eventual great-grandchildren (through an overheated planet) most will certainly select the latter. 

Can we replace fossil fuels with low carbon energies? In the short term the answer is no and this is due to the MAGNITUDE of the energy we have to replace. Even with aggressive growth, the EIA estimates that solar PV will be less than 1% of our global total primary energy supply by 2040; wind could be close to 3%. However, the absolute growth in fossil fuels use during this same period would completely overshadow the increases in low carbon energy.

In the long term (50 to 100 years) we could replace fossil fuels with a bit of hydro, a little sun & wind and lots of nuclear (either fission alone or combined with fusion).

So bar a very disruptive black swan, the RESPONSIBLE thing to do is to plan for a "business as usual" consumption of fossil fuels for the next few decades. 

Bringing our atmosphere back to 350 ppm of CO2 this century is completely unrealistic. Our plans should probably consider concentrations of 600 ppm by the year 2100. 

Now, after planning for the worst it doesn't mean we should sit down with our arms crossed, no. We should act, and our top three priorities should probably be:

1. Reduce our per capita energy consumption.

2. Stop population growth.

3. Start moving as fast as feasible to lower carbon sources.

Jack Welch said that effective management consists of looking reality in the eye and acting accordingly.

Humanity cannot afford more wishful thinking, we should follow Jack's advice.