#electrify everything

“It all starts with the transition to clean energy, now approaching full speed with 87 countries drawing at least 5% of their electricity from wind and solar. The US hit 5% in 2011 and surged past 20% renewable electricity last year. If the country follows the trend set by others at the leading edge, wind and solar will account for half of US power-generating capacity just 10 years from now. That would be years—or even decades—earlier than major forecasts.

[...] Successful technologies follow an S-shaped adoption curve. Sales move at a crawl in the early-adopter phase, then surprisingly quickly once things go mainstream. The top of the curve represents the last people to make the transition. Even in 2022, a tenth of humanity still doesn't have electricity.

This podcast interview with energy futures strategist Kingsmill Bond is chock-loaded with truth bombs about the absurd futilities of fossil fuel energy generation & why anyone resistant the total electrification of the energy sector is a fucking caveman.

Highlights: -the evolution of solar and wind power + the emergence of EVs, heat pumps, and electric light + vast improvements to battery storage options, cabling, and smart energy management tech are all combining to make the complete replacement of burning fossil fuels to harvest energy a fiscal inevitability.

-The evolution of battery storage now has us at a place where we are now storing about 10% of the energy generated by solar and wind power (400gWh), and are within range of storing all the renewable energy we need in batteries by 2045.

-The cost of solar batteries has been falling by 10%-15% per year.

-in order to access 1000kWh of energy from a fossil fuel, you need to expend about 666kWh of energy mining the fossil fuel, transporting it to a refinery, refining it, then transporting it to a retail outlet, then having the consumer burn it - wasting the last bit of energy in the expended heat.

-if we're specifically talking about extracting oil to create gasoline to fuel cars, it's even worse - about 80% of the energy in that tank of gas will have been expended getting the gas into the car's fuel tank or lost when it's burnt up in the engine.

The global cost of the energy wasted in using fossil fuels? About $4.2 trillion annually!

-contrast this with solar power. In order to access 1000kWh of energy from a solar panel, you need to expend about 100kWh to get the power from sunshine to its end use. Solar power is remarkably more efficient than burning fossil fuels.

In fact, because it's so much more efficient, you don't need to replace 100% of the energy used by burning fossil fuels, but just 50%-60%, since so much less energy is wasted in the process.

-Globally, we burn 16 billion tons of fossil fuels annually. The entire buildout of a completely non-fossil fuel based energy system around the world would require burning one billion tons of fossil fuels, once.

-You have to move 100 billion tons of materials to extract coal and oil from the Earth. Mining the minerals required to build a solar-powered energy system to generate the same amount of energy would require moving 10 billion tons of materials.

-Once you burn through a barrel of oil generating energy, you then need to burn another barrel of oil to keep generating energy. If you burn two or ten or a hundred barrels of oil to build solar panels, an inverter, a battery, and wiring you don't have to do it again for the lifetime of the system, which will typically be 20-30 years.

-Renewable energy solutions is getting rapidly cheaper as the technology improves and scales. SOLAR POWER IS NOW THE CHEAPEST SOURCE OF ENERGY IN THE WORLD!!!

This is the opposite with fossil fuels, where we've already extracted the cheapest & easiest energy sources and we're increasingly left with fossil fuels that are incredibly difficult, energy-intensive, and expensive to extract.

Case in point: the Alberta, Canada tar sands, where one barrel of oil requires 4-5 barrels of clean water to extract and 15 barrels of toxic waste is produced in the process. See also: fracking. Sunshine and wind do not get more difficult to harness to produce energy because they are limitless.

Because of this contrast in costs, the total electrification of our energy use is inevitable because renewable electrical generation is cheaper than burning fossil fuels.

-The Earth has the capacity to provide as much energy in five days of the sun shining as the entirety of all known oil reserves.

-The solar energy potential on Earth is 100x greater than the amount of energy we currently generate from all other sources combined.

-90% of growth in global electrical generation is now coming from renewables.

-75% of people in the world live in countries that import fossil fuels. But most countries have vast untapped renewable energy potential - in 92% of countries, that potential is roughly 10x the amount of electricity they are currently generating.

-About 30% of China's energy production now comes from renewable sources and its continuing to is electrify its energy production at the rate of approximately 1% per year.

-Two-thirds of countries with emerging markets now generate more solar power than the US. Pakistan, for example, now has enough solar panels to generate 40% of its total energy demands, accomplishing this in just two years.

-30% of vehicle sales in Vietnam are now EVs. In Nepal, 75% of new car sales are EVs. 90% of new cars on Norwegian roads are now EVs.

-75% of total global energy demand can now be met with renewably-generated electricity.

“Programs to encourage EV sales often revolve around price – either lowering the price of EVs, or showing potential buyers how much they might save over the vehicle’s lifetime. A compatibility intervention, in contrast, focuses on whether an EV can suit an individual’s lifestyle.“

"If the price changes are viewed as temporary, say if the government reduces gas taxes for a few months or consumers think oil markets will calm down within a few months, then it’s much less likely that gasoline prices will affect new vehicle sales or fuel economy," said economist Joshua Linn, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Resources For the Future.