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Fossil Fuels Could Be Phased Out Worldwide In a Decade, Says Study (phys.org)
James Hakner, writing for Phys.org: The worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade, according to an article published by a major energy think tank in the UK. Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, believes that the next great energy revolution could take place in a fraction of the time of major changes in the past. But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns. And that effort must learn from the trials and tribulations from previous energy systems and technology transitions. In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Research & Social Science, Professor Sovacool analyses energy transitions throughout history and argues that only looking towards the past can often paint an overly bleak and unnecessary picture. Moving from wood to coal in Europe, for example, took between 96 and 160 years, whereas electricity took 47 to 69 years to enter into mainstream use. But this time the future could be different, he says -- the scarcity of resources, the threat of climate change and vastly improved technological learning and innovation could greatly accelerate a global shift to a cleaner energy future.There's no doubt that we will soon reach a point wherein solar and wind will be readily available and feasible to the vast majority but, the decade timeframe feels like a stretch. We must acknowledge the financial and political challenges that we face today. Private and government-backed companies have invested billions of dollars into plants that turn fossil fuels into electricity. Ditching these plants means losing a lot of capital and owing investors with plenty of explanations. There are several forces at play here.
Pile on a few more conditions and you realize this is just wishful thinking. Some "think tank". Alternative energy is growing. And this is a good thing. But oil was still viable at $150/bbl. Don't think that at $40/bbl people are going to drop it. I think we're currently at or just past peak oil. Peak oil is not where oil is scarce - peak oil is where there is so much oil available that we are literally drowning in oil. Which is why we're hearing about oil gluts, and seeing plummeting oil prices.
Yes, economic slowdown in the US and China has something to do with that too. But currently we are running flat out pumping up oil from tar sands, from the bottom of the oceans at scary depths, and even shale oil from coal and barely treading water, barely producing oversupply. Once the economic slowdown reverses and demand picks up again, these gluts are going to disappear, but production will not pick up as quickly. It can't. All the "easy" oil has already been drilled. Fossil fuels will be not be phased out, there just won't be anymore. But it's going to take a lot more than a decade.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I haven't even read the study and can tell you the title conclusion is completely ridiculous, bordering on bad click-bait.There exists over 1 Billion cars in the world. Unless the governments of all countries in the world both fully subsidize AND legally mandate people to switch to electric cars AND build global infrastructure to support 1 Billion electrical cars, then it ain't gonna happen. Simple as that, end of story.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Yes, we'll just replace EVERY car, truck, bus, motorcycle, and every other existing conveyance that uses an internal combustion engine. No PROBLEM!
That's what I thought at first too, but the paper is talking about generating electricity, not transportation.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As of 2015, 33% of the United States' electricity was produced from coal.
Coal might not be used as much as it once was, but it's still among the dominant energy sources in the US and many other nations.
In many regions we didn't really see a shift away from coal. Instead of the coal being directly used on-premise to heat buildings, it was centralized at large coal burning plants. The plants would then provide the coal-derived energy to power the electrical heating of these buildings.
This is what we're seeing with electrically powered vehicles, too. The end user only thinks they're using electricity, often not realizing that this energy came from burning coal. They think they're being "green" when they're indirectly powering their vehicles using coal!
Not actually renewables, they will build 40 nuclear reactors within the next five years.
Achille Talon
Hop!
What? No. Fissionable elements are only produced in appreciable amounts in supernovae, where they store only an infinitesimal fraction of the energy released, and we're pretty much stuck with the amount that was originally incorporated into the Earth's mass at conception(minus decay losses, plus the occasional tiny layer deposited by nearby supernovae). All the easily-fissionable elements in the Earth's crust (thorium, uranium, etc.) combined would provide only a few centuries to, at most, a few millenia of power at current energy consumption levels. (Uranium alone would only provide power for a few decades with current technology) After that there's no more fuel (yes, we could perhaps learn to mine the planet's molten core, as well as the rest of the solar system, but still, once used up, it's gone)
Fusion is no more renewable in principle, but there's many orders of magnitude more fusion fuel available - somewhere north of 99% of the mass of our entire solar system for starters, though somewhat dramatically less on Earth itself. Still at least a few orders of magnitude more total energy worth available planetside though.
And yes, most energy sources do ultimately originate from fusion, tidal, aka gravitational, being the exception (orbiting masses would presumably still exist even if fusion were impossible in our universe) , but the question for renewabilty is whether a power source can be depleted by usage. Biofuels, wind, or other forms of solar power cannot - the energy they harness is being released regardless of our usage rate, the only question is whether or not we choose to harness it. It's unlikely that anything we can do will have an appreciable effect on the rate of energy being consumed by our sun, at least not unless/until we discover some new laws of physics, or manage to harness an substantial fraction of its total output.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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Education
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
PhD, Science & Technology Studies
2003 – 2006
Activities and Societies: Science Policy; History of Science and Technology; International Research; Science and Technology in Society.
Wayne State University
Wayne State University
MA, Communication Studies
2001 – 2003
Activities and Societies: Rhetoric and argumentation
John Carroll University
John Carroll University
BA, Philosophy
1997 – 2001