Energy Transitions in the Pipeline

Are industrial heat and energy intermittency unsolvable without fossil fuels?

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Over a year ago, I learned that phasing out fossil fuels in many economic sectors was going to be a bigger challenge than I had appreciated before. In my post “Can renewable energy power a civilization built on fossil fuels?” I highlighted six areas where decarbonization was seen as especially problematic, perhaps impossible in the eyes of some observers. Since then, I’ve been looking for signs of progress in any of these areas. In several, there have been some promising developments. At a minimum, I think it’s fair to say “impossible to transition” is no longer the most appropriate way to think about these sectors. Rather, we should be asking “what alternative technologies are in the pipeline?”, “where are these new technologies being adopted?” and “how much of our current energy capacity will they provide, once our Age of Oil comes to an end?”

Here are recent developments and continuing challenges in two of the six sectors identified in that post as resistant to transitioning away from fossil fuels — industrial heat to power steel production and other high-temperature processes, and energy storage to compensate for intermittency of wind and solar energy sources. In future posts I hope to look at progress in other…