There are plenty of political issues to explore, if you are so inclined, in terms of how to move to a sustainable energy future. As Richard Heinberg argues, so far, we are not doing very well: ‘Despite trillions of dollars having been spent on renewable energy infrastructure, carbon emissions are still increasing, not decreasing, and the share of world energy coming from fossil fuels is only slightly less today than it was 20 years ago. In 2024, the world is using more oil, coal, and natural gas than it did in 2023. While the U.S. and many European nations have seen a declining share of their electricity production coming from coal, the continuing global growth in fossil fuel usage and CO2 emissions overshadows any cause for celebration.’ So, he says, driven by growth in energy demand, ‘we are not experiencing a real energy transition. All that humanity is doing is adding energy from renewable sources to the growing amount of energy it derives from fossil fuels’.
To change this dire situation, we have to face a whole series of technical and political challenges, as Heinberg spells out, with huge social and economic changes being needed. He says that, in the early stages of the transition, most of the energy for building new low-carbon infrastructure ‘will have to come from fossil fuels, since those fuels still supply over 80 percent of world energy (bootstrapping the transition—using only renewable energy to build transition-related machinery—would take far too long). So, the transition itself, especially if undertaken quickly, will entail a large pulse of carbon emissions.’ He goes on ‘ The only ways to minimize these transition-related emissions would be, first, to aim to build a substantially smaller global energy system than the one we are trying to replace; and second, to significantly reduce energy usage for non-transition-related purposes—including transportation and manufacturing, cornerstones of our current economy—during the transition.
In addition, he says the transition will require materials- including copper, iron, aluminum, lithium, iridium, gallium, sand, and rare earth elements. He says ‘while some estimates suggest that global reserves of these elements are sufficient for the initial build-out of renewable-energy infrastructure at scale, there are still two big challenges. First: obtaining these materials will require greatly expanding extractive industries along with their supply chains. These industries are inherently polluting, and they inevitably degrade land’.
He says the second materials challenge is because ‘renewable energy infrastructure will have to be replaced periodically- every 25 to 50 years’ and he asks ‘even if Earth’s minerals are sufficient for the first full-scale build-out of panels, turbines, and batteries, will limited mineral abundance permit continual replacements? Transition advocates say that we can avoid depleting the planet’s ores by recycling minerals and metals after constructing the first iteration of solar-and-wind technology’. However, he says ‘recycling is never complete, with some materials degraded in the process. One analysis suggests recycling would only buy a couple of centuries’ worth of time before depletion would bring an end to the regime of replaceable renewable-energy machines- and that’s assuming a widespread, coordinated implementation of recycling on an unprecedented scale. Again, the only real long-term solution is to aim for a much smaller global energy system’.
Overall he says ‘the transition of society from fossil fuel dependency to reliance on low-carbon energy sources will be impossible to achieve without also reducing overall energy usage substantially & maintaining this lower rate of energy usage indefinitely. This transition isn’t just about building lots of solar panels, wind turbines, & batteries. It is about organizing society differently so that is uses much less energy & gets whatever energy it uses from sources that can be sustained over the long run’.
But he says that will involve some tough political issues. For example he says the only realistic source of energy for the transition is the energy used now for non-transition purposes. ‘That means most people, especially in highly industrialized countries, would have to use significantly less energy, both directly and also indirectly (in terms of energy embedded in products, and in services provided by society, such as road building). To accomplish this with the minimum of societal stress will require a social means of managing energy demand’. Basically some form of rationing. He suggests Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs), since they could provide individual consumers with an incentive to cut back on their energy use. But he admits that ‘persuading people to accept using less energy will be hard, if everyone still wants to use more. Therefore, it will be necessary to manage the public’s expectations. This may sound technocratic and scary, but in fact society has already been managing the public’s expectations for over a century via advertising—which constantly delivers messages encouraging everyone to consume as much as they can. Now we need different messages to set different expectations’.
That, controversially, will also include perceptions about population. ‘If population is always growing while available energy is capped, that means ever-less energy will be available per capita’, whereas ‘with fewer people, energy decline will be less of a burden on a per capita basis’. He notes that ‘global population will start to decline sometime during this century. Fertility rates are falling worldwide, and China, Japan, Germany, and many other nations are already seeing population shrinkage. Rather than viewing this as a problem, we should see it as an opportunity’. So he says ‘we should stop pushing a pro-natalist agenda; ensure that women have the educational opportunities, social standing, security, and access to birth control to make their own childbearing choices; incentivize small families, and aim for the long-term goal of a stable global population closer to the number of people who were alive at the start of the fossil-fuel revolution’, although he warns that ‘voluntary population shrinkage will be too slow to help us much in reaching immediate emissions reduction targets’. Maybe that why he is keen on carbon capture, although he prefers enhanced natural carbon sequestration: ‘Reform agriculture to build soil rather than destroy it. Restore ecosystems, including grasslands, wetlands, forests, and coral reefs.’
An ambitious manifesto then- ‘a world that’s less crowded, one where nature is recovering rather than retreating, and one in which people are healthier and happier.’ Though he admits that it is ‘politically unachievable today’. But he says that’s ‘largely because humanity hasn’t yet fully faced the failure of our current path of prioritizing immediate profits and comfort above long-term survival- and the consequences of that failure. Given better knowledge of where we’re currently headed, and the alternatives, what is politically impossible today could quickly become inevitable’.
So an optimistic conclusion to offset his mostly rather pessimistic overall view about the future..But for another view point see Roy Morrison’s arguably equally worrying analysis, focussing more on geo-politics and power conflicts. Either way, there's clearly lots to debate....
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