Can Renewable Energy Power a Civilization Built on Fossil Fuels?
The Future of Humanity, Part 3
This is Part 3 of my series of posts on the future of humanity. The series starts here.
The Age of Oil is coming to an end … one way or another. We can’t live with it and we can’t live without it, at least not yet.
Metaphorically, we have given ourselves the task of replacing the tires on the car while racing down the freeway.
Let’s assume for a moment we can pull that off. What kind of civilization can we expect at the other end of the transition?
We know that renewable energy can power a civilization, as it did for thousands of years — energy generated by human and domesticated work animals. But can renewables power a civilization as large, as energy-dependent, and as dispersed as ours? Energy scientists have been studying this question for years and, interestingly, have become more optimistic recently as their models and measures of energy transition scenarios have improved.
For example, a 2021 analysis looked at California’s plan to (1) generate 60% of its electricity using renewable energy technologies by 2030, increasing to 100% by 2045, while (2) introducing 5 million zero-emission vehicles by 2030, increasing to 10 million by 2035. The plan calls for 80% of all electricity production in the state to be powered by renewable energy sources by 2030, primarily utilizing photovoltaic cells (solar panels) to generate power and lithium-ion batteries to store it. Could such a system possibly succeed?
To answer this question, the authors examined five scenarios: (1) no new electric vehicles added by 2030, (2) 5 million added, (3) 10 million added, (4) 10 million added with demand-load balancing, and (5) 10 million added with demand-load balancing plus vehicle-to-grid technology (in which energy can be returned to the power grid from electric vehicle batteries when they are charged). All scenarios were found to be viable solutions.
“Results have shown that a future 80% renewable grid mix in California may not only be expected to be able to cope with the increased demand caused by a significant increase in electrical mobility, but also to do so with remarkably stable environmental and net energy performance, irrespective of the specific assumptions on the number of electric vehicles, their charging pattern, and on battery lifetime.” (source, p. 15)
As a proof of concept, these results are impressive. The study finds a lower-carbon future for California to be a feasible transition goal, even if not a total solution. Perhaps the most consequential finding of the study is the conclusion that the EROIs of wind and solar are high enough to transition at least one sector of one modern society away from fossil fuels. This is encouraging, but it doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet.
There is more to power than generating electricity
Much of the good news we read about the energy transition these days is focused on electricity. This is where we have been most successful to date, and where we are focusing most of our plans, as with the California example above. But it’s important to read the fine print.
When California says it will produce 80% of its electricity from renewable technologies by 2030, it is not saying it will produce 80% of its energy from renewables. Overall, across the world as a whole, only about 20% of the world’s energy is delivered in the form of electricity. The lions-share of the rest (67%) is still produced by the big three fossil fuels: oil, gas, and coal (source). That energy is used to power industrial processes like manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and transportation. The question is: can those industries be powered by energy sources other than fossil fuels? If so, at what cost and with what expected capacity?
Here’s a simple way to depict the issue. Today, steel can only be produced in coal-fired blast furnaces capable of reaching 1700°C. No non-fossil fuel is currently capable of achieving those temperatures (source). If coal or other fossil fuels are no longer available (either depleted or banned) then either we must find a substitute energy source that can power steel production or we can no longer produce steel. The latter case would not spell the end of humanity, but it would certainly spell the end of modern industrial civilization.
It is questions like this that make our present moment so precarious, and our future so uncertain.
There is no middle ground between being able to produce steel and not being able to produce steel. It’s one or the other. What we do know is that the answer will depend on our ability to invent something that doesn’t exist yet (in this case, renewably-powered steel blast furnaces). Will we succeed in inventing it? We won’t know until we know. Even a cursory reading of the energy transition literature reveals a number of these “known unknowns” — things we don’t know how to do yet, but which we must learn how to do if we want to retain any semblance of the industrial civilization we enjoy today (as uneven as that enjoyment is) following the end of fossil fuels.
Some known unknowns
Here are a few of the technologies we must invent, or radically transform, if we want to survive the twin existential threats of global warming and resource depletion. The list is daunting, to say the least. It is also far from exhaustive.
Non-fossil fuel industrial heating: This is huge. Several possible technologies are being studied, but none are ready for commercial substitution yet (source, source). Plus, the time it takes to refit industrial plants to a new energy source has historically taken decades, but we need to do it in years.
Multi-hour storage of wind and solar generated energy: The biggest problem with wind and solar energy sources is intermittency. They only produce energy when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. To be used at other times, that energy needs to be stored. As noted in the California example above, lithium-ion batteries appear capable of handling the job, but to build out a full round-trip system (e.g. vehicle-to-grid technology) will require significant refitting of both current electric vehicles and charging stations. Cost, size, longevity, efficiency, and recycling are all issues currently being addressed (source). But vehicle-to-grid technology is still at the stage of demo projects (source), not full-scale implementations.
Additional concerns have been raised about the availability of various materials and minerals to support the massive production of batteries needed for any energy transition over the next few years. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2021: “Demand for lithium … is expected to grow 70 times over the next couple decades. But the supply from existing lithium mines and projects under construction can only meet about half the projected demand this decade.” (source)
Decarbonization of transport: Another critical area. Our civilization depends on global trade networks connected by huge container ships, cargo planes, freight trains, and long-haul trucks. In 2018, 24% of all global CO2 emissions were produced by this sector: about 45% of that total was produced by passenger transport over roads (cars), 30% by freight transport over roads (trucks), 12% by aviation (planes), 11% by shipping (ships), and just 1% by rail (trains) (source).
Although freight transport produces less pollution overall than passenger transport, its transition to renewable energy is also critical because our globally connected civilization is fundamentally dependent on global transport. Without a renewable substitute to power ships, trucks, and planes, all that activity grinds to a halt with the end of fossil fuels. However, as the IEA again reports, “Many of the fuels and technologies that offer potential for long-term decarbonization of transport modes for which emissions abatement is challenging [i.e., shipping, aviation, heavy trucking] tend to be in the very early stages of development.”
There is no guarantee we will be able to decarbonize transport, but our ability to do so will determine the scale of civilization we can build in a post-oil world.
Decarbonization of buildings and construction: Direct greenhouse gas emissions from existing buildings are estimated to produce 5% of global emissions, but this number increases to 17% when accounting for indirect emissions from electricity and heat generated within buildings (source). In addition, the construction industry as a whole, and the industries it relies on for basic materials (lumber, cement, steel, asphalt, etc.) are heavy consumers of fossil fuels and major contributors of CO2 emissions and natural resource depletion. Decarbonizing the building industry faces a number of challenges, including retrofitting the massive existing stock of residential and commercial buildings around the world, decarbonizing the production of construction materials, and improving the energy efficiency of new construction. Norway has been a leader in addressing these challenges, but replicating its successes may be more difficult in other parts of the world (source).
Carbon capture and storage (aka “negative emission technologies”): As observers have become less confident that we can cut greenhouse gas emissions as deeply and as quickly as our current climate projections say we must, attention has naturally turned to the “do over” option: removing at least some of the CO2 and other pollutants we have already dumped into the atmosphere. Although we have seen some progress in retrofitting dirty power plants to capture their existing CO2 emissions (source) at point of release, these efforts are proving to be less energy efficient and more expensive than comparable renewable-plus-storage solutions (source). A bigger challenge is removing existing CO2 from the atmosphere directly, called Direct Air Capture (DAC). Although some experimental technologies have proven promising (source), the sheer magnitude of the task makes it unlikely this technology can scale to a point where it can measurably impact overall greenhouse gas concentrations already in the atmosphere. Currently, only 19 DAC plants are operating around the world and the technology has yet to be demonstrated at large scale (source).
At this point, it appears the best approach to carbon capture and storage is the natural one: enhancing the earth’s carbon capture capability through reforestation, better forest and tree plantation management, conservation-oriented agriculture, trees in croplands, and coastal wetlands restoration. One recent study found that these techniques, if properly implemented at scale, could absorb up to 30% of the CO2 emitted in various low-carbon scenarios (i.e., keeping warming below 2°C by 2100) (source, source). A more recent study has found that natural carbon capture solutions can indeed help moderate global temperature rise, but concludes that “additional carbon sequestration via nature restoration is unlikely to be done quickly enough to notably reduce the global peak temperatures expected in the next few decades” (source).
Public cooperation: A final known unknown is not a technology need, but an attitude. Will members of the public, especially voters and their representatives in the developed nations, be willing to make short-term sacrifices in their energy-drenched lifestyles in order to build greater sustainability for the future? For example, will Americans willingly give up their fixation with gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs and begin purchasing electric vehicles at volumes required by various energy transition models? Will the world’s most entitled citizens accept the aesthetic and environmental costs of building out a massive renewable energy infrastructure to support a transition away from fossil fuels, often “in their own backyards”?
The outlook is not good. Already, several promising clean energy transmission projects have been rejected or delayed due to NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) opposition. The fate of the “Northern Pass” project — in which Massachusetts was blocked from importing clean hydropower from Quebec because New Hampshire residents rejected transmission lines running through their state — is instructive. When one imagines how citizens are likely to respond to proposals for massive wind or solar farms near their towns or recreational areas, the need to properly manage expectations is key.
It is important to remember that resistance to energy transition initiatives in the United States is not just a function of people preferring not to have their lifestyles disrupted. It is an active objective of the Republican Party, which vehemently opposes all climate change initiatives because they impose short-term financial costs on the party’s wealthy benefactors. The GOP deploys the full force of its rightwing media allies to reinforce climate policy doubt and resistance in its followers and block climate action initiatives wherever possible. As commentators have noted, this is something of a unique feature of the American rightwing. No other conservative party anywhere in the world supports the kind of climate change denialism rampant in the American Republican Party (source, source).
Public resistance to climate change policies and projects in the US does not just arise from local sensitivities alone. It is manufactured, funded, amplified, and weaponized by Republican and rightwing political elites to serve their own short-term political purposes.
Humanity is currently facing two existential threats: climate change (aka “cooking ourselves alive”) and resource depletion (aka “an end to fossil fuels … and lots of other stuff we need to run our civilization”). Not surprisingly, these threats are deeply intertwined. As we saw in Part 1 of this series, they reverberate through all three global systems currently holding our civilization together: ecological, political, and economic. All three are exhibiting accelerating signs of distress.
We have examined three aspects of these threats: what has been done, what needs to be done and what is likely to be done. Our results have not been encouraging. In summary:
- Humanity’s response to climate change has been tragically inadequate to date.
- After decades of warnings by climate scientists and activists, we still only produce about 12% of our global energy from renewable sources.
- Governments have shown themselves incapable of planning or executing a realistic path out of the current situation.
- The world continues to get hotter, and apparently at a faster pace than anyone expected.
- Most scientists agree we have blown past any possibility of meeting the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
- We are making some significant progress in transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables, but these gains have generally been limited to the production of electricity, which powers only about 20% of the world’s energy needs.
- In order to transition the other 80% of global energy that derives from fossil fuels, we have to invent many new technologies that do not exist today. We have no idea whether we will succeed in doing so.
- We face significant political and public resistance, organized and funded by rightwing groups like the American Republican Party, that is dedicated to blocking or obstructing any progress on climate change or resource depletion.
- We cannot build the renewable energy infrastructure required to transition from fossil fuels without burning fossil fuels to do so. So we will continue dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for at least the next several decades. At what rate will be a critical factor in determining how hot the planet will get (and stay) later in this century.
- To survive the end of oil, we must perform multiple feats of massive infrastructure buildout, reluctantly relying on fossil fuels to do so, betting on many technologies not invented yet, and overcoming significant political resistance and inertia in the process. All this must happen in the next few decades, because fossil fuels have an expiration date that is rapidly approaching.
Given these findings, the most reasonable conclusion at this point is that we can indeed transition at least some of our energy production away from fossil fuels, but probably not enough to recreate the global energy capacity we enjoy today thanks to fossil fuels. At the same time, we have missed our chance to hold the global mean temperature to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
All evidence points to the fact that we are on our way to a 2–4°C warmer world. And that is going to have profound implications for the kind of civilization we can expect to build, once the Age of Oil comes to an end.
Not only are we trying to replace the tires on the car while racing down the freeway, we are now trying to do so after we have caused the freeway to start melting under us.
If we accept these as realistic parameters for the world we are racing toward, what will living in that world actually feel like? I’m reminded of a famous quote attributed to William Gibson: “The future has arrived — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” I believe this aphorism applies equally to global warming:
Our hotter world has already arrived, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.
