climate realism

 Engelsberg Ideas generally offers sensible articles, so I have to give serious attention The case for climate realism in an age of soaring energy demand.

In the conventional narrative about decarbonisation, net zero is going to be achieved by building lots of wind farms and installing lots of solar; batteries are going to fix the intermittency problems when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow; and it is all going to be cheap and can be delivered at sufficient scale to keep to the 2015 Paris Agreement target of well below 2°C of global warming. There would need to be a bit of gas, little or no coal, and, more recently, a good dose of nuclear, now added even by the greenest environmentalists. It would all be win-win-win – cheaper, more secure – and it would deal with climate change.

In reality, it will be none of these things. Countries such as the UK and Germany, which have pushed hardest for wind and solar, have some of the highest electricity costs in the developed world. Security of supply cannot be sufficiently guaranteed with short-term batteries, and the results have been more about deindustrialisation and territorial carbon production than about what really matters: carbon consumption. Made in China (primarily with coal) replaces Made in the UK or Made in Germany. The renewables supply chain dependency is now all about China, too, which produces around 80 per cent of the world’s solar panels and 80 per cent of the batteries and has a stranglehold on the refined critical minerals.

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It was not supposed to be like this. Energy efficiency was supposed to enable energy intensity per unit of output to fall. Energy efficiency was supposed to reduce the demand for energy and, as we approached the 2050 targets, new technologies would allow all those cheap renewables to overcome their intermittency. 

This part of the narrative turns out to be wrong – and for two reasons, one theoretical and one about the changing economic composition of future economies. The theoretical reason is easy to state and devastating in puncturing the demand-side conventional narrative. If energy use is more efficient, it means less energy is needed per unit of output. This is equivalent to a fall in the price of energy. If price falls, demand goes up, not down. We can all consume more energy for the same budget. This is the Jevons paradox and it is rock solid. Energy efficiency improved massively in the 20th century and into this century, and it spurred a massive increase in the demand for energy.

To this is added a further blow: what we are now witnessing more generally across economies is a technology shift towards new energy-intensive industries not seen since the coming of steel in the late 19th century. These new technologies require lots of energy and they require it on a firm, not intermittent, basis. The energy they need is overwhelmingly electricity, and so electrification is rapidly advancing in those countries grasping the new economic opportunities and economic growth they may bring. That electricity is still generated overwhelmingly by fossil fuels (and fossil fuels still make up about 85 per cent of global energy supplies). Electric does not necessarily mean renewables, and intermittent generators like wind and solar do not meet the new AI industries’ demand for the five nines – electricity that is 99.999 per cent reliable.

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Recognising the awesome nature of the challenge in front of us may be frightening. People may want to close their ears. But ignoring the facts does not make it go away. Climate realism is the first step in rebasing climate policies, and facing up to what is likely to be coming. It is much more helpful than chanting mantras about ‘1.5°C’, ‘2°C’ and ‘net zero 2050’. It also tells us that adaptation is a very urgent need. Perhaps if the global population starts to fall at the end of the century and new technologies come along, it may all turn out well – eventually. But in the meantime, we face a doubling of energy demand by 2050, and that is much more likely to happen than limiting climate change to 2°C by then. 

 Realism here feels too much like fatalism, and, with me, fatalism underlies my depression. I have been doing my best not to return to that kind of thinking so I am not inclined to follow here.

The first thing is to curtail AI data centers. That seems most likely considering current politics. 

Second is an old idea of mine that we must not only get from fossil fuels but also from their monoculture of energy supply. The future cannot be only wind or solar or nuclear or any other alternative to fossil fuel, but a combination of them. And, yes, there may need to add some oil and natural gas. Promoting just one method of energy production seems more conducive to business than anything useful for the species. Utility regulators are long accustomed to dealing with companies that generate power from one source.

Third, expanding wind and solar may be held up by state legislatures acting on behalf of power companies. It is my understanding that Indiana gives excess power generated by the solar panels of private citizens to utility companies. I think that has to blunt the development of solar power in Indiana. Consider this: that every house in a city generated most of its own energy, that any excess was retained within the city. Would that not then lower the carbon useage of the city?

I keep thinking climate change needs to be fitted into “Chases Ashes”. The number of heat advisories this year brought it home to me.

sch 9/23