Energy Transition Failure
09/27/22 19:38
The Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2022
"New report highlights the staggering cost of green ‘delusions.’
Even if you’re never hit by a 7-ton blade falling from the night sky, alternative energy will fail you. Regardless of facts or feelings about the climate, there are reasons why wind and solar power are not replacing fossil fuels. Wind and solar are also no substitute for nuclear power.
The government of California can issue as many proclamations and prohibitions as it wants against gasoline-powered vehicles. No doubt the Biden administration will enjoy spending the ocean of tax dollars now earmarked for low-intensity energy sources. But reality will stubbornly remain.
In a new report due out next week from the Manhattan Institute, Mark Mills takes on the “dangerous delusion” of a global energy transition that eliminates the use of fossil fuels. Surveying energy markets and public policy around the world, Mr. Mills asks readers to “consider that years of hypertrophied rhetoric and trillions of dollars of spending and subsidies on a transition have not significantly changed the energy landscape.” He notes:
Civilization still depends on hydrocarbons for 84% of all energy, a mere two percentage points lower than two decades ago. Solar and wind technologies today supply barely 5% of global energy. Electric vehicles still offset less than 0.5% of world oil demand.
Mr. Mills then explains why the global appetite for energy is not heading south:
One can begin with a reality that cannot be blinked away: energy is needed for everything that is fabricated, grown, operated, or moved... digital devices and hardware—the most complex products ever produced at scale—require, on average, about 1,000 times more energy to fabricate, pound for pound, than the products that dominated the 20th century... it takes nearly as much energy to make one smartphone as it does one refrigerator, even though the latter weighs 1,000 times more. The world produces nearly 10 times more smartphones a year than refrigerators. Thus, the global fabrication of smartphones now uses 15% as much energy as does the entire automotive industry, even though a car weighs 10,000 times more than a smartphone. The global Cloud, society’s newest and biggest infrastructure, uses twice as much electricity as the entire nation of Japan. And then, of course, there are all the other common, vital needs for energy, from heating and cooling homes to producing food and delivering freight."
"New report highlights the staggering cost of green ‘delusions.’
Even if you’re never hit by a 7-ton blade falling from the night sky, alternative energy will fail you. Regardless of facts or feelings about the climate, there are reasons why wind and solar power are not replacing fossil fuels. Wind and solar are also no substitute for nuclear power.
The government of California can issue as many proclamations and prohibitions as it wants against gasoline-powered vehicles. No doubt the Biden administration will enjoy spending the ocean of tax dollars now earmarked for low-intensity energy sources. But reality will stubbornly remain.
In a new report due out next week from the Manhattan Institute, Mark Mills takes on the “dangerous delusion” of a global energy transition that eliminates the use of fossil fuels. Surveying energy markets and public policy around the world, Mr. Mills asks readers to “consider that years of hypertrophied rhetoric and trillions of dollars of spending and subsidies on a transition have not significantly changed the energy landscape.” He notes:
Civilization still depends on hydrocarbons for 84% of all energy, a mere two percentage points lower than two decades ago. Solar and wind technologies today supply barely 5% of global energy. Electric vehicles still offset less than 0.5% of world oil demand.
Mr. Mills then explains why the global appetite for energy is not heading south:
One can begin with a reality that cannot be blinked away: energy is needed for everything that is fabricated, grown, operated, or moved... digital devices and hardware—the most complex products ever produced at scale—require, on average, about 1,000 times more energy to fabricate, pound for pound, than the products that dominated the 20th century... it takes nearly as much energy to make one smartphone as it does one refrigerator, even though the latter weighs 1,000 times more. The world produces nearly 10 times more smartphones a year than refrigerators. Thus, the global fabrication of smartphones now uses 15% as much energy as does the entire automotive industry, even though a car weighs 10,000 times more than a smartphone. The global Cloud, society’s newest and biggest infrastructure, uses twice as much electricity as the entire nation of Japan. And then, of course, there are all the other common, vital needs for energy, from heating and cooling homes to producing food and delivering freight."