My Views: I would love it if Solar, Hydro and Wind and other renewable sources of energy + Non Renewable Nuclear were to provide enough energy reliably to completely replace fossil fuels, but I know it’s not a feasible solution at least at this point. And maybe it will never be. Renewable sources of energy are highly dependent on some metal mining (some are rare metals) and I doubt if the prices of those metals would go lower as the demand for those renewable sources of energy sky rockets. i.e., It’s a non-linear equation, the price of renewables will not remain the same if we want to meet 100% of our energy needs from renewables. So, Just Stopping Oil is a pretty stupid idea concocted by people who have a much better standard of living than me.
Skip This if you must: As an Indian, I can speak for 1.4B people (I asked) when I say that, no matter how much pressure developed nations impose on India and countries like India, we will still keep using the least costliest source of energy, because we too want nice things and we too want our women to be liberated from cow dung/wood stoves and from the burden of washing clothes and utensils. So yeah, there is no way bar great scientific innovation which will phase out fossil fuels at least in the near future and perhaps ever.
PS: I don’t like fossil fuels, I don’t like the pollution or the effect it has on the environment and I wish they could be replaced by something renewable, but I just don’t like the chances of that happening.
I saw an economist recently speak and he touched on the topic of oil. Beyond using it for power, it is deeply rooted in everything we do by way of plastic (in your car, on your TV, fast food containers, Barbie boxes, coffee makers, and so on). Practically speaking, giving up oil will take a while, so we should start the process sooner rather than later. Super interesting presentation.
Agreed, and on the topic of nuclear energy generation, it takes 10-20 years to build a decent plant. Combined cycle natural gas plants take less than 2 years from breaking ground to synchronizing with the grid. It’s no wonder these types of power plant have been sprouting up everywhere. If we wanted to be positioned to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, we should’ve been building nuclear plants at some point in the past 40 years to handle base loads while we replace coal and gas plants with wind, solar, and hydro. Because of plastics, I don’t see us completely off oil products any time soon, but there’s no good reason for us to still be burning fossils fuels for electricity. And this is coming from a combined cycle gas plant operator. We are doing everything we can to be as green as feasible, but we still release significant greenhouse gases while nuclear plants don’t. America will be far behind if we continue on this path while other world leaders invest in modern nuclear tech. There will be a profitable, commercial fusion reactor somewhere in the world within 20 years, and maybe we will have built an experimental net-zero fusion reactor by then.