63 Comments

Here, as usual, I agree with most of what you say. When you worry, however, about being “plunged into darkness,” you join the ranks of those who fear the way the world really works. After all, we slip into and out of darkness unfailingly every day. We will not find an alternative source of energy to fossil fuels that doesn’t continue the process of devastating the biosphere. Night falls but it’s good for sleeping. And dawn follows.

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Hi Eugene, thanks for commenting. Darkness is a metaphor for the chaos and pain that will follow suddenly losing access to energy with regards to food production, even politics.

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I understand. And my “night falls, dawn follows,” is a metaphor for living within the limits of the natural world.

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I'm glad you appreciate that fact Rachel. I was going to remind you of it back on the "rewilding" podcast because there were a few rather flippant comments there about the industrialists who have controlled the world for decades simply not being able to imagine how to turn off fossil fuels. But if we did? An unimaginable systems crash. But now that renewable are on a runaway exponential s curve that will only slow and stabilise when everyone has all the energy they need - I have hope.

Oh, and "Critical Minerals?" Remember I said that Michaux was wrong because:-

1. he isolated Germany from the super-grid it is a part of (so no 4 weeks storage because the bigger the grid, the less storage)

2. he chose the most expensive, most Critical Mineral rich NMC batteries for 4 weeks storage - multiplying out his errors when there are vastly simpler AND CHEAPER alternatives made from vastly super-abundant materials. (See below on grid storage.)

If we just swap his NMC for Sodium batteries and off-river pumped hydro - his OWN PAPER shows we have enough Critical Minerals. I did the maths here.https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/michaux-sans-batteries/

It's not just these errors that exaggerate his claim on the Critical Minerals. He's also avoided another HUGE topic like the plague. That is - substitution. There are alternative brands for every sector of the Energy Transition that simply do NOT need ANY Critical Minerals in the first place. These are at the bottom of their S curve - just starting. But as they scale up they will be cheaper and gradually take over the market. Consider:

SOLAR PANELS: 95% of solar panel brands are normal crystalline cells that already avoid ANY rare-earths or Critical Minerals by using silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust, and aluminium 8% and some silver or copper to send the electricity out.

https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/critical-minerals-solar-batteries/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystalline_silicon

THIN FILM is the only sector with rare earth issues. But they’re only 5% of the solar panel market for special niches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panel#Technology

WIND TURBINES - are made from iron - 5% of the earth’s crust, aluminium, and fibreglass blades - that’s polyester resin and glass fibres. We can even recycle these blades now.

Wind generators WITHOUT rare-earth magnets are now a thing:- http://www.offshorewind.biz/2022/07/28/15-mw-rare-earth-free-offshore-wind-turbine-seeks-path-to-market/

Niron Magnetics: https://www.nironmagnetics.com/

This next one has radically reinvented their turbine. Instead of requiring the usual quarterly service, 4 times annually for 25 to 30 years - these parts NEVER need servicing! http://newsreleases.sandia.gov/turbine_innovation/

LITHIUM RESERVES: We have 22 million tons of lithium reserves. If we save it for EV’s (and use other grid storage - see below), at 8kg per EV it’s enough for 2.75 BILLION EV’s, twice what we need. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a42417327/lithium-supply-batteries-electric-vehicles/

ALSO - MOST CITY DRIVING does not need higher-range lithium - but could be cheaper lower range sodium (sea salt). The average Australian passenger car drives only 11,100 km per year - or 30.5 km a day. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/tourism-and-transport/survey-motor-vehicle-use-australia/latest-release

ALTERNATIVES FOR GRID STORAGE: SODIUM batteries are great for the first few hours, as it is 30% cheaper than lithium, operates in a much greater temperature range, and is thermally stable (doesn’t suddenly burst into flames). For longer storage use OFF-river pumped hydro. Worldwide there are over 100 TIMES more potential sites than we need. Pick your best 1% and you’re done! https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/

ELECTRIC MOTORS: Valeo have a rare-earth free electric motor. https://www.valeo.com/en/catalogue/pts/high-voltage-rare-earth-free-electric-motor/

TESLA are working on one - prototype due mid 2024? https://www.carwow.co.uk/tesla/news/5220/new-tesla-ev-compact-electric-car-hatchback-price-specs-release-date

It’s a trend across the industry with Tesla, BMW, General Motors, Borgwarner, Jaguar & Land Rover, Tata, ZF, Vitesco, Renault, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Bentley, Marelli and Eurogroup Laminations all working on it. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/automakers-suppliers-pushing-cut-rare-earths-evs-2023-11-14/

RECYCLING all these is getting more efficient. Unlike burning fossil fuels, once mined, all these minerals go into the industrial ecosystem to be recycled forever. "Black mass" from ground-up EV batteries is no longer a waste product to dispose of, but a sought after resource.

COPPER: Replace with aluminium. Aluminium is less conductive so you have to have 25% thicker wires - but that doesn’t matter as it is half the price and weight. HVDC lines are already aluminium. It can replace 90% of the functions of copper. https://www.shapesbyhydro.com/en/material-properties/how-we-can-substitute-aluminium-for-copper-in-the-green-transition/

OTHER REFERENCES:-

Wang et al Jan 2023 says we have enough minerals

https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00001-6#%20

The IEA says we have enough but must encourage speed of mine approval

https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals

Data scientist Hannah Ritchie of “Our world in data” and her own research says we have enough minerals - but there might be temporary shortages as we need to open more mines

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/minerals-for-electricity

LESS mining than fossil fuels - even when accounting for all the rock ore bodies moved to refine into the pure metals https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/energy-transition-materials

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Breathtaking energy and ecological blindness e.g. "there might be temporary shortages as we need to open more mines." Even refining sodium takes a lot of energy input... Not to mention the water footprint of various purification processes. Nate Hagans is the better person to comment here though.

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I agree with Craig Anderson. Breathtaking is the blindness to the insane amounts of fossil fuel subsidy to produce virtually all of the energy and infrastructure mentioned above. Why? Because even if all transport were electrified, about half of all USA energy use is in the form of heat! (do the math on this data: https://www.llnl.gov/article/45276/us-energy-use-rises-highest-level-ever) OK some if it is less than 600C, but a lot is greater than 600C for which the idea of thermal batteries is useless. Creating even moderate levels of domestic much less industrial heat with electricity is maddeningly inefficient (1/3 for generation, another 1/3 for thermal battery storage (so final efficiency of 11%). So deep down in the underlying root sources, this whole strategy is nuts, mostly because the sheer scope needed means it will come slowly and because of the lack of materials, it will be short lived. Don't you see that it's all connected?

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Except Nate Hagens believes Simon Michaux, and believes William Rees somehow disproved the Energy Transition, and believes the EROEI sceptics when the best peer-reviewed papers on the planet show the EROEI of wind and solar to be climbing, and Nate Hagens believes the "Butchers dilemma" about oil refineries when big oil are already preparing to adapt the industry to new markets. (Not saying I love big oil - just that this is the reality.)

Seriously - renewables sceptics are starting to sound like Climate Deniers. "Oh - don't read that PEER REVIEWED stuff - who you want to listen to .... " and then they refer you to Willie Soon or other Heartland Institute names.

In the same way, there are a few core renewable deniers repeating the same tired old rubbish. Even Chris Martenson - who I know is a technically MUCH smarter guy than I am - told me the other day that renewables cannot happen because Michaux had disproved it!

When I shared the data - he said I was just too emotional! But Michaux is a cherry-picker - carefully selecting an isolated German grid for the worst possible winters in the first world - all to come up with his carefully massaged 4 weeks of NMC batteries. It's so ridiculous I call it "The Batteries that ate the world!" and want to score it to a 1950's sci-fi sound track.

Germany is NOT in an isolated grid - but in the ENTSO-E super-grid. This monster stretches across 35 countries and an area a third again the size of Australia. ALL the peer-reviewed renewables papers are recommending Overbuild and super-grids. But Michaux LIES to the public by omitting the verifiable FACT that Germany is in ENTSO-E - and then misleads everyone about why we need the "Rolls Royce" of NMC batteries for grid storage when super-abundant sodium and off-river PHES will do the job instead.

When Hagens and Martenson are relying on Michaux to make their case - you know the renewables-sceptics are in trouble.

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I've been having a hard time accessing current EROI data whoise source I trust. Can you provide?

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Renewables sceptics these days rely on outdated EROEI arguments from papers like Weissbach (2013) which in turn quoted solar technology figures from 2005! That’s just not acceptable in an era when just 5 years progress in renewables design can mean a 40% reduction in costs due to learning rates. Experts in Life Cycle Analysis are starting to challenge this outdated data.

Dr David Murphy co-authored many of the very first EROEI papers with Charles Hall. He has reanalysed the data. Solar panels have at least DOUBLE the EROEI of oil! He categorically puts solar at 10 and oil down at 4.6. A “founding father” of the EROEI concept saying solar has twice as high an Energy Return as oil - which kind of backs what the Planet Critical podcast was saying. (That oil is going way down!) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856

Now - Weissbach 2013 is a bit like Michaux - but instead of using Germany to exaggerate how many minerals are required - it exaggerates how Germany’s poor weather impacts solar EROEI. Weissback also over-exaggerated the high ENERGY cost of storage through an isolated German winter. Anyone familiar with Michaux will recognise this trick - except Michaux emphasises the high MINERAL cost of storage through an isolated German winter.

The answer is the same. Overbuilding across a wide enough area reduces storage. Do NOT take German winters as normative - as ‘normal’ for the human race and renewables is the fact that 3/4 of us live in the “Sunshine Belt” that have NOTHING comparable to a German winter! Indeed - the EU looks like they are extending their ENTSO-E super-grid down towards the Sunshine Belt. Overbuild reduces storage costs - both in financial, mineral, and EROEI terms. The “Law of Large Numbers” smooths out the load. (From Scientific American way back in 2015.)

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/renewable-energy-intermittency-explained-challenges-solutions-and-opportunities/

As David Murphy says: “However, detailed scenario analyses of the net energy performance of even highly decarbonized grid mixes relying heavily on PVs, based on high temporal resolution grid balancing algorithms rather than blunt assumptions, indicate that the additional energy investment for electrochemical energy storage does not significantly affect the overall EROIPE-eq of the resulting electricity mix.”

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7098

It gets better when one realises that we only need a few hours of battery storage anyway, as after then comes an economic point for off-river pumped hydro. The world has 100 TIMES the potential sites it needs. https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/

SOLAR EROEI: The US National Renewable Energy Lab says solar reaches energy payback in 1 to 4 years. Then with “assumed life expectancies of 30 years, 87% to 97% of the energy that PV systems generate won’t be plagued by pollution, greenhouse gases, and depletion of resources.” https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

WHY SO MUCH EROEI GAIN IN SOLAR? The advances in Solar are amazing. The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany shows that today's solar cells use only ONE THIRD of the high-energy silicon it took to make solar panels back in 2005. Given silicon cells have been at about 22% efficiency for over 20 years - producing the same power with 1/3 the energy input embodied in silicon has had an ENORMOUS impact on PV EROEI. They also noted the obvious fact that solar in the higher, darker latitudes up north away from the Sunshine Belt have a longer payback time. “PV systems in Northern Europe need around 2.5 years to balance the input energy, while PV systems in the South equal their energy input after 1.5 years and less, depending on the technology installed.” A PV system in Sicily with a payback time of about one year. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf

Meanwhile as WIND TURBINES have increased in size and height they’ve gained access to more reliable winds and increased their capacity factor. Kubiszewski et all found an EROEI of 19 to 25, but this was way back in 2010!

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222703134_Meta-Analysis_of_Net_Energy_Return_for_Wind_Power_Systems Today’s studies by Vestas show wind to be over 50! https://www.vestas.com/en/sustainability/environment/energy-payback

Super-grids are the answer. HVDC can carry power across 1000 km and only lose 1.6%. That means solar at the equator could hypothetically run a base at the North Pole and only lose 16% of the electricity on the trip! So apart from a few island states (which are generally in the “Sunshine Belt” anyway) there isn’t a nation on Earth that cannot trade their wind power with equatorial solar. A marriage made in heaven, as wind often complements solar by running at night - reducing the cost and EROEI impacts of storage. On this combined strategy, Diesendorf et al concludes: “Recent papers argue that the energy return on energy invested (EROI) for renewable electricity technologies and systems may be so low that the transition from fossil fuelled to renewable electricity may displace investment in other important economic sectors. For the case of large-scale electricity supply, we draw upon insights from Net Energy Analysis and renewable energy engineering to examine critically some assumptions, data and arguments in these papers, focussing on regions in which wind and solar can provide the majority of electricity. We show that the above claim is based on outdated data on EROIs, on failing to consider the energy efficiency advantages of transitioning away from fuel combustion and on overestimates of storage requirements. EROIs of wind and solar photovoltaics, which can provide the vast majority of electricity and indeed of all energy in the future, are generally high (≥ 10) and increasing. The impact of storage on EROI depends on the quantities and types of storage adopted and their operational strategies. In the regions considered in this paper, the quantity of storage required to maintain generation reliability is relatively small.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800919320543

Now consider the efficiencies of an all-electric civilisation. Once we move to electric transport and mining and industry - we’ll run the modern world on about 40% of the original energy! Sure - it will be vastly more ELECTRICITY - but as coal and oil waste so much of their original energy as heat - overall it will be vastly less original ENERGY. Anyone that insists renewables must replace fossil fuels on a 1:1 basis is simply ignorant of how the energy transition is going to function. https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency

Think about the waste in the old system. Oil must be mined and refined and shipped across the planet and then driven down the highway to top up the Garage every week. Then the internal combustion takes this precious energy BURNS IT - releasing it into the atmosphere - and only converts 20% of it into forward motion! Compare that to solar. It’s installed once every 25 to 30 years, and the EV converts 80% of that energy into actual driving! At the end of the solar panel lifetime it can be recycled - unlike the oil.

Alas - I’m a New Urbanist / Ecocity / Solarpunk sort of guy - and shouldn’t sound like I’m praising cars. But there is the reality. Renewable EROEI’s are better - and an Electric Civilisation will run the modern world on 40% of today’s energy - and VASTLY LESS THAN THAT if we can convince governments and town planners that people want walkable intimate town squares, not bland suburbia with no ‘there’ there. Solarpunk all the way! We need town plans that are more European than Europe - that have the cutest town square just a 5 minute walk from your townhouse or eco-apartment. The town square is your ‘third place’ - a public loungeroom with the best subway or tram, surrounded by book stores and coffee shops and bakeries and a post office and undercover areas to eat and sit and chat. But it’s all covered in vines and trees and rooftop gardens and frogs chirping in the pond and birds singing. Solarpunk all the way!

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Look for anything by David Murphy, he’s a professor now and has written extensively about the EROI of clean energy; his mentor was a guy named Charlie Hall who applied the term to energy as Charlie Hall was a biologist who looked at the amount of energy fish needed to survive (or something like that)

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I agree. I don’t know why Nate Hagens, and other smart folks like Art Berman believe that renewables “don’t work.” They are tragically incorrect. Chris Martenson IMHO is in the same boat. We put 10 kW of solar on our roof recently — after a FIVE YEAR battle with the utility — and I am the first customer in 108 years (yes, 108 years) to challenge their rules. The solar rules were literally the worst in the U.S., i.e. you a put solar up on your roof, but you CAN’T USE ANY of the electricity produced! It all belongs to the utility, which will pay you 3-5 cents/kWh for the electricity, and then the utility sells it to your neighbor for 15 cents. If you want to know what’s happening in the world of electric utilities and regulators, this is it. UTILITIES won’t CHANGE, and REGULATORS won’t make them because regulators are mostly lapdogs for utilities. Look at AZ and NV: going hell for leather on natural gas power plants and pipelines — hello? The sunniest locations in the U.S. are running on….natural gas! ALL IMPORTED! All needing pipelines running from TX to AZ, compressor stations all along the way, running 24/7/365, leaking like crazy…

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Time will prove or disprove the theorem. None the less Ev's will constantly need to be replaced every15 years or so, thus they are a negative feedback property

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Thanks for doing the sums. This was my view too. Although I don't think new tech can save us, the research of Think-X shows how it can alleviate the down-sides. Most notably, their prediction that beef herds will decline by 90% in the near/medium term due to precision microbial fermentation. Don't get me wrong, we're still heading for collapse.

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What is the main reason for collapse? I can see potential for it in various countries - but not some global inevitable collapse of civilisation some talk about. That would take a full scale nuclear war. And even then - we'd rebuild. Except the world would mainly be speaking with Australian and Argentinian accents.

https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/nuclear-war/

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Like the 2008 crash, collapse will be contagious. It will also be fast. Collapse of civilisations happens that way (see Peter Turchin). The Berlin Wall fell in a day. The Titanic too 26 months to build but 160 minutes to sink. If you think about the 9 planetary boundaries, and we have crossed nearly all of them, then our social/ecological predicament is very precarious indeed. If we think that there can be a tipping point in one planetary boundary won't spill over into others, we are at risk of being short-sighted. So to answer your question about the reason for collapse, I would suggest that the planetary boundaries are so over-stretched that a tipping point in one of them will spark it off. But I'm not a lone prepper - I think we need local community resiliance - more like what Jem Bendell espouses in his book 'Breaking Together'.

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Sorry but the Berlin Wall wasn't a collapse as most people drone it but a political revolution and realignment. Society survived. Economic alliances shifted in momentous ways and it's still an ongoing project - but not a Collapse of Law and order and food systems and fresh water and cannibals roaming the streets.

Now I agree that climate change etc increases the chance of catastrophe - it's just I don't call it Collapse. I call it War. But even after those, we rebuild

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Art Berman shows that so-called "renewables" are *not* displacing fossil fuel.

Rather, our energy use is increasing at the rate of growth of renewables, even as fossil fuel production flattens.

This is not the way it is supposed to work. Living in a fool's paradise…

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"Art Berman shows that so-called "renewables" are *not* displacing fossil fuel."

This is what I call "Snapshot" thinking. It's working from an almost autistic blinkered now, blind to the statistics of the recent past, current trends, and future trends. It takes a Snapshot of the world today, looks at some expensive Tesla - and asks "Who can afford that? There's no way that's taking over!" But it misses that just beyond their camera lens - just on the horizon is a massive dust storm heading their way. It's the cloud kicked up by an army of BYD Dolphin Mini's - coming fast! It's like saying "Climate change has NOT melted the Greenland Ice sheet all the way down." Um - yeah - but we can see the trends!

"Rather, our energy use is increasing at the rate of growth of renewables..."

Again wrong - our global energy increase is about 10% to 20% FASTER than the growth of renewables! That is - renewables are 'only' about 80% of all new energy production. And the Greenland ice-sheet is still there. But we can see the trends.

"even as fossil fuel production flattens."

Read that sentence again.

Now read it again.

"This is not the way it is supposed to work."

This is EXACTLY the way it is supposed to work!

In fact - how ELSE is an exponential S curve supposed to look in this stage of its life-cycle in a world of INCREASING energy demand?

We live in a developing world with a growing demand for energy.

And a growing population.

NOT a developed world with stable demand and a stable population.

Sure - in THAT world the S curve should have taken over all new production by now! But we are not in that world. Yet. (Population growth stabilises by around 2050ish). Instead - the Energy Transition S curve is doing exactly what it should be doing. Doubling every 4 years. Growing. Increasing its share of that huge new energy market. And statistics show it is about to catch and overtake all new energy demand, then all older energy as well!

A few decades ago renewables were the underdog. 10 to 15 times more expensive than they are today, no real plan on how to stabilise an intermittent grid, and vastly smaller supply lines. It was only a tiny percent of new energy built back then.

Today renewables are 1/4 the cost of nuclear (LCOE - Lazard), the cheapest energy source we've ever had - and solar looks like it could halve in price AGAIN by 2030. And the plan is to Overbuild capacity across large Super-grids which reduce storage costs to the point where the whole system is cheaper than coal.

I keep posting this IEA data - even in this thread. People keep missing it.

The IEA predicts an OIL GLUT BY 2028!

https://www.iea.org/news/growth-in-global-oil-demand-is-set-to-slow-significantly-by-2028

The IEA predicts that World FOSSIL FUEL demand will peak by 2030 - all categories - and then begin to decline!

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/10/iea-energy-peak-fossil-fuel-demand-by-2030

Berman said fossil fuel production was starting to flatten? Gee - I wonder why? (winks)

Renewables are doubling every 4 years - TWICE the exponential growth of oil in the 20th century (which only doubled every decade).

Despite Political reluctance to commit - the energy Markets are soon to race AHEAD of the IPCC Paris goals!

I'll say that again.

RACE AHEAD of the Paris goals!

EG: They wanted 615 GIGAWATTS of solar built annually by 2030 - but that could happen in the next year or so and it's STILL doubling.

This article wonders if we're going to see 2 or 3 TERAWATTS annually by 2030! That’s MULTIPLES of times faster than Paris!

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-one-terawatt-of-solar-deployed-annually/

"Living in a fool's paradise…"

Berman seems to be living in a Doomer's paradise - ignoring today's trends because they rain on his peak oil parade. Oh well. We'll know by 2028 who was right on oil vs EV's - and we'll know by 2030 which way the energy market is going.

I don't know the future. We've been an hour away from TEOTWAWKI since ICBM's were invented. But I see no evidence that Collapse is inevitable. Change is. I say BRING IT!

Cleaner air, climate change nerfed, PetroDictators that hate western liberal democracies nerfed, 55,000 cargo tankers reduced to half that with fossil fuels no longer plying our oceans, tens of thousands of cargo-ships and millions of nodding donkey oil pumps and who knows how many oil rigs to recycle into steel for the new energy infrastructure.

Here's another weird exponential thought.

IMAGINE THE WORLD OF 2100!

If we get the welfare policy settings right, apparently we could lower the population peak in 2050. Some model that by 2100 the world could be down to 6 billion! (Earth4All - “Club of Rome” sister organisation.)

https://earth4all.life/the-five-extraordinary-turnarounds/

Imagine your great grandchildren living in that world.

Imagine how different it could be!

6 billion living on clean energy (and potentially new food from Seaweed Protein Powder and Precision Fermentation.)

Now look around! It’s 50 years AFTER the human population peak. They have all that leftover infrastructure from a peak of maybe 9 billion people! If they actually are back down to 6 billion - that’s like China’s Ghost cities - but on a scale that is hard to imagine. All those resources! All that wood (from wooden apartments in those eco-cities), all that concrete, all that steel! All those extra wind turbines and solar farms and powerlines that can be recycled.

It could easily be like recycling Chicago or Brisbane 1000 times over! The world might just get a break from most mining for a few generations after if that scenario unfolds.

They would be in a world of renewable energy from renewable materials.

I say bring it on!

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Yikes... the Jeavons paradox?

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"The sad truth is that a renewable energy transition is imaginary."

https://www.artberman.com/blog/telling-the-truth-about-our-future/

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“We are living through an energy revolution that will be every bit as life altering as the fossil-fuel revolution 150 years ago.

This is driven primarily by plummeting prices of renewable energy: Solar energy has declined 90 percent in the past decade, while wind has declined 70 percent. This means wind and solar are now our cheapest energy sources.”?

https://web.archive.org/web/20220326032138/https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/commentary/article/Commentary-Believe-it-you-are-living-through-an-17029592.php

However?

‘Around 1975, 75 pct. of the global energy use was supplied by fossil fuels. What is this percentage nowadays? Surprise, surprise, it is rising:

“Renewables Growth Did Not Dent Fossil Fuel Dominance in 2022, Report Says, Reuters, June 26, 2023

Global energy demand rose 1% last year and record renewables growth did nothing to shift the dominance of fossil fuels, which still accounted for 82% of supply, the industry’s Statistical Review of World Energy report said on Monday.’ ?

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/03/unforced-variations-march-2024/comment-page-2/#comments

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exactly. Thx, I'll check out this blog.

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The fracking boom in the US Permian is just about gassed, too. I touched on that here.

https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/the-vanishing-and-reappearance-of

Of course the build out of renewables fails with no diesel to run heavy equipment, and agriculture fails, too. Medical supply chains, everything. Yet, we just go on pretending.

People need to understand these things, and I think it's important we communicate them because our leadership and mainstream media certainly won't, but the writing was on the wall 50 years ago. We did nothing, and the tragedy and horror around the corner is going to be unimaginable and unpredictable.

Biden has failed to galvanize the nation, let alone the world, over the realities of climate change and the end of oil. I wonder if he even grasps the situation, or if his corporatocracy advisers have him snowed? Sunak appears to simply be a self-serving weasel.

The lack of public awareness in the US is stunning, and these conditions are perfect for authoritarian rule. The corruption of the legal system is apparent as climate protestors get locked up and Trump walks free to spew vile. Keep warning and enjoy every good day. They are numbered.

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And end-of-life fracking wells are just left as it is expensive to cap them; as a consequence methane leaks from these wells on a continuing basis. With methane being almost 100 times worse, as a greenhouse gas, than CO2 over a 20 year time-frame it does not take much leakage before methane is worse than coal (even the lignite variety) in this regard. In addition there are also leaks during transportation, flaring and usage. Estimates of such leakages range up to 9% with 4% being the figure that should not be exceeded.

Anyone who thinks that 'burning gas' is green (as does the EU!) is ill-informed!

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I agree, of course. The power of methane, is much greater than CO2, even if much shorter lived. When Biden paused LNG terminals in the Gulf, I was not impressed. I am guessing if he is reelected, that pause will be lifted. There has been massive investment in those terminals. Natural gas proponents have done a good job of making it seem green somehow, and the LNG byproduct of fracking in the Permian represents a lot of money.

https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/giving-pause-to-disaster

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The oligarchy plans to escape to their yachts and bunkers (good luck with that). Maybe once the people realize we have to overthrow their stranglehold to survive as a species, we will finally be able to progress.

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There are only two choices for the path we're on. Ignorance or unabated greed and a disdain for other lives. With FFs running out, building a renewable energy economy is impossible. I don't believe we're going to get there. The world economy is going to degrow, quite painfully, I'm afraid. If we were rational and just, this is the path we would take. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/degrowth-the-vision-we-must-demand

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This species has proven time and time again that we are not rational, we are not just, with rare and few exceptions. We are also not moral, ethical, and intelligent in any of the ways we tell (lie to) ourselves.

Degrowth should be the obvious choice, and we will ‘degrow’ but by force, not choice.

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Yes, we're in the early stages of the wrong kind of degrowth. I'm anticipating an accelerating domino effect of migrants fleeing environmental catastrophes and agriculture failures. Climate migration and refugees are already under way. There is also evidence our extended oil boom from fracking is running dry. I explained degrowth in an article last July, trying to get the concept out to people who are unaware or don't know what it encompasses. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/degrowth-the-vision-we-must-demand

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"For those people who do not know what is going to happen in the next few years, the vast majority of filthy rich Republicans have built underground shelters stocked with food and water as well as lots of alcohol to party with. They do not intend to stay underground for long, as they plan on using Nuclear Weapons to blast Dirt, Dust and Sulfur from dormant volcanoes at high latitudes such as from the Aleutian Islands and mainland Alaska. I have never heard of any mention of Russian Volcanoes. I have been told by others that volcanos at the southern tip of South America may also be used.

The Dirt, Dust and Sulfur will create a nuclear winter that will last 14 to 16 months, last I heard. The Rich will come out of their shelters anytime during the Nuclear Winter, though it would be best to stay underground for at least a few days after the modern Nuclear Bomb Blasts in the dormant volcanoes. Since the modern Nukes are Fusion weapons as opposed to mainly Fission weapons as tested and used during and after WWII, the radiation intensity should be abated within a week or so.

Meanwhile, the people who do not have shelters will gradually die from the cold and the Republican goal of reducing global population to below half a billion as specified on the Georgia Guidestones (Preferably less than 300 million people as the Rich Republicans now tell me) will become a reality.

When the Nuclear Winter wanes, green life will start growing abundantly. The tremendous Green Growth will suck a lot of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Since factories will not be in operation CO2 generation from industry will be a thing of memory. With Billions of people and animals gone, the release of CO2 from animals will also greatly decrease. The Nuclear Winter will have slowed down the release of methane from the melting permafrost. With CO2 decreasing and Methane slowing in its release rate from the permafrost, the climate will come back down to temperatures that were common 20 years ago.

Slowly, temperatures will go down to levels from a century ago. No factories and few people and large animal herds will be gone. If you are a Rich Republican you will rejoice at your good fortune. If you are not rich but alive, the Republicans might enslave you for manual labor, but do not expect any favors. You will just be slave labor and expendable at any time."?

https://www.facebook.com/JoseBarbaNueva/posts/pfbid0wcKaNeCmywtBWjPj4NN2LhbvpVGwcuxGAE1QorKwy4rnh9KxsprWsogPkHF5smkpl

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"Oh no! Some random dude on Facebook said the Republicans were planning a James Bond Supervillain end of the world scheme....!" (winks)

He admits on his own Facebook page that he has no documentation to prove this - just that back in the 80's he 'saw' things. He also seems to like creative writing.

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I can well understand your skepticism, and I did not read this FB post, nor have I heard this theory of a deliberate nuclear winter. However, there is some logic to the idea that the super wealthy would like to see a population reduction. Ugly? Yes. Unthinkable? It should be, but those bunkers are real, I could provide numerous links, including shelters built in former Atlas missile silos. If you're interested, check out my article Circumstantial Evidence. Those insisting on burning FFs to the last drop damn well know a crash is coming. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/circumstantial-evidence

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OIL DEMAND TO PEAK: The IEA tracks EV sales over the last few years: 2020: 5% 2021: 9% 2022: 14%

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/executive-summary

OIL GLUT BY 2028! https://www.iea.org/news/growth-in-global-oil-demand-is-set-to-slow-significantly-by-2028

Renewables are 1/4 the cost of nuclear (LCOE - Lazard). They are doubling every 4 years - TWICE the exponential growth of oil in the 20th century which doubled every decade. They are starting to race ahead of the IPCC Paris goals. EG: They wanted 615 GW solar annually by 2030 - but that could happen in the next year or so and it's still doubling. This article wonders if we're going to see 3 TERAWATTS annually by 2030! That’s 2 to 3 times the Paris goals. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-one-terawatt-of-solar-deployed-annually/

IEA: World FOSSIL FUEL demand will peak by 2030 and then begin to decline! That's as a whole!

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/10/iea-energy-peak-fossil-fuel-demand-by-2030

China is about to open 455 GW of renewables - and their emissions could peak in the next few years! The world’s biggest industrial factory - peaking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX_PeNzz-Lw

Professor Andrew Blakers (who won the Queen Elizabeth Prize - like a Nobel prize for engineers) says net zero will be reached well BEFORE 2050! https://theconversation.com/theres-a-huge-surge-in-solar-production-under-way-and-australia-could-show-the-world-how-to-use-it-190241

As we “Electrify Everything” in transport and mining and smelting and industrial heat, everything will be so much more efficient they get the SAME WORK DONE with 60% LESS energy. Burning stuff like cave-men is just that inefficient. A modern all-electric civilisation will run on 40% of today’s energy! https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency

Australia’s electricity grid will probably be 82% clean by 2030.https://theconversation.com/how-could-australia-actually-get-to-net-zero-heres-how-217778

Australian industrial giants worth a THIRD of our stock-market figured out it’s cheaper to Electrify Everything and run it on renewables. They’re going to build 3 TIMES our 2020 electricity grid capacity in renewables to Electrify their industrial heating with Rondo heat-bricks and electric mining trucks etc. Page 45 here. https://energytransitionsinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Pathways-to-Industrial-Decarbonisation-report-Updated-August-2023-Australian-Industry-ETI.pdf

People are going to be shocked as global demand for oil peaks in a few years - then all fossil fuels peak in 2030 and start their gradual and accelerating decline. That's not far away. I'm quite surprised to be uttering the next sentence - but the market has tasted super-cheap renewables - and IT LIKES IT!

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I love this optimism, and I hope you are right. I'm a bit more pessimistic.

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I'm not saying it will be smooth - just that it is possible. Also - there are heaps of places we should not mine! The Guardian reported that many great apes in Africa could be threatened by the quest for Cobalt and Lithium. And I'm here shaking my head asking "WHY!?" NMC batteries are already being heavily replaced by LFP - lithium iron phosphate batteries - which are cheaper and thermally stable. (Don't burst into flames!) About a third of EV's now are LFP.

(Which is just another example of how ABSURD Michaux is to insist GRID batteries must be NMC when even EV's are switching to LFP. Michaux to renewable energy is like the guy to bridge building that insists you've got to build across the WIDEST part of the harbour, and build the bridge out of gold! "Oh no - suddenly we can't build the Sydney Harbour Bridge because there isn't enough GOLD in the world!" Ha ha - it's that ridiculous.)

Also - there are even OTHER options we can look at that affect materials. Tesla's Semi is a great electric truck - but needs the best batteries. What if we didn't need a super-battery to go the whole way, but a cheaper battery to get you just part of the way - and then you swapped the battery? That might allow super-cheap super-abundant SODIUM to take over! Then we wouldn't even mine lithium - but could get into drying out salt. Anywhere you have a desert next to the ocean can be a 'salt mine'.

So here's the thing. This model exists! I don't know if it's the one that win - as this space is changing so fast a kid in a lab could cook up the next super-battery from abundant materials that charges super fast and takes you 1000 miles! But this is a model that could work even with sodium batteries for trucking -

* It’s more convenient than Tesla’s “megacharger” which means the driver has to juggle timing their half hour lunch break around charging their truck. Janus allows a quick stop, toilet break, and then go have lunch where you want.

* Solar on the warehouse roof takes care of 10 trucks, and in remote areas the warehouse could build a local solar farm for an off-grid solution.

* Avoiding fast-charging is less stress on the batteries and local grid.

* Trucks need regular engine overhauls - with this solution they can get one and it pays for itself in a year. There’s no engine to service - and the battery swap is 1/3 the cost of diesel.

* Today’s batteries do 400 km - future batteries will do longer.

* Regenerative breaking recharges the battery and avoids wear on the brake pads.

* “Fully Charged” 15 minute special. https://youtu.be/9eYLtPSf7PY

Latest truck conversion showroom https://www.januselectric.com.au/

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Thanks for post. Have you ever come accross Tim Morton's Energy Cost of Energy and the Surplus Energy Economics? That seems to be very relevant in this context, even more so than EROEI. https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2018/12/01/139-the-surplus-energy-economy/

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Rachael great interview, i can't find Alister's thermodynamic model or publications anywhere, do you have any links you could share?

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As much as people want to believe that those "so-called" renewables will save the planet, you are seriously missing any credible evidence. All renewables require massive amounts of ff to extract and process. The depletion of that main resource means renewable production will slam into a brick wall

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I have to again caution that from a climate perspective I find this misleading and dangerous; even if oil is net energy negative, that will not stop it from being sold and burned, because the oil companies are not buying the energy for cash. Even if they have to spend 3/4 a barrel extracting and refining 1/4 barrel, they'll still make money on that 1/4 barrel that they bring to market. More so if there's a cultural narrative of scarcity that supports high prices. They won't all just stop selling oil.

The limiting factor on our oil use should be a "carbon budget" whereby we take drastic measures to stop burning it even if it is still available, rather than waiting for an ever-elusive point when it becomes too expensive and rare. Remember that scarcity raises prices, high prices give more money to oil companies, and they use that to further consolidate their power.

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Choosing low-density energy is energy insanity. Choosing to rely on wind is like deciding to rely on sailing ships instead of non-weather dependent powered ships. Nuclear is the future, and we should be focusing on its build out and stick with reliable base load energy and transition to nuclear over time. We can’t live without oil… to believe so disregards the fact that almost everything we use on a daily basis comes from petroleum. Literally tens of thousands of things every day. We are watching the de-industrialization of Germany at an alarming rate… if you desire to have world economies follow suit and collapse also, then unreliable “renewables” are a good choice. Green energy is a bigger fraud than Covid by a large factor.

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I agree with the comment regarding low-density energy insanity and nuclear; and that we will continue to need to use oil for decades to come.

The misinformation regarding radiation risks and demonising of nuclear since the 1960s is appalling. Conflating nuclear power with nuclear weapons, as is done routinely by anti-nuclear proponents, is just nonsense. With the SALT process there was a need to be able to eliminate all the fissile material that was recovered from destroyed missiles - it became fuel for existing nuclear power plants. This is the safest place for any fissile material; no-one is going to try and get at the fuel in a working nuclear power reactor.

Given the Laws of Thermodynamics it is inevitable that the final product of all energy use is going to be heat - whether wasted or used. We do need to become more efficient at utilising the heat we currently waste, but 100% electric is just fantastical as an end-point.

And with regard to Covid, it is not a fraud. We are just learning about the medium to long-term affects; but we already know that there is significant sickness affecting the ability to work of working-age individuals. And we have no idea what the eventual outcomes will be; but we do know that chicken-pox and HIV viruses remain dormant/hidden for years to decades before other illnesses occur. It is very possible that Covid is able to have the same behaviour.

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To assume we can construct mega projects such as nuclear power stations in the next 15 years depends on a stable BAWHAKI 'busuness-as-we-have-always-known-it". It also assumes that after it it built,mBAWHAKI will continue for decades. If we look at global sustainability indicators, they are pointing to continual degredation of all we know. Prof. Jem Bendell maintains we are in a process of collapse. He welcomes people disproving his analysis. Unless we can disprove it, nuclear isn't relevant.

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I realise that we are heading for collapse. The issue is whether it will be chaotic or a managed process in an attempt to minimise the effects - which are going to be devastating and global. I also realise that our current systems and infrastructure (both political and economic) are not up to the task that needs to be faced.

Building mega projects is perfectly possible, but requires BIG Government and the realisation that making funding available is easy for a government with it's own currency. What is not always easily available though is the capability or capacity within an economy to deliver whatever such funding is for.

This means that our current neo-liberal capitalist economic and political system has to go, and the sooner it happens the better for everyone.

Unfortunately this is not going to happen voluntarily so we are heading for chaotic, umanaged and catastrophic collapse.

With regard to nuclear power stations in particular, UAE, S Korea, Slovakia and China have shown that they can be built rapidly. Jack Devanney (https://gordianknotbook.com/) covers the issues and potential solutions very well in the accompanying blogs.

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To all who say, don't be a doomer we will have these new ......batteries....link...... Try working out in the real industry, not on the internet. "The mine footprint is small". Do you have any idea how many mining disasters and polluted water have been created by mining. I worked on Vancouver Island in the Coastal Rainforest seen thousands of landslides (and yes they still happen every year). Yet the company logging has it's FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification. It's all BS to keep the wheels of industrial civilization running so the stock markets keep climbing and lining the pockets of the rich. If you care about the life of this planet and not just your way of life you would wake up to what is happening all around you. Technology will not save the planet. There are too many of us and we are extracting every resource to keep our way of life going. What we need is less people, less stuff and a slower pace of more localized life. Downsize or die!

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As a fan of Ecocities (aka New Urbanism - but with a more Solarpunk emphasis) - I agree with a lot of what you say about the *materials* efficiency. But as usual I must disagree with the Doomerism in statements like "We cannot have a functioning biome whilst gouging out the earth’s insides for precious metals for machines we replace every year." While poetically written - given how small the mined areas could be - that's simply not true. I hear you concern, as we DO need to scrutinize all mining efforts to ban them from ecologically sensitive areas of high biodiversity or endangered species risk. We DO need to watch them for indigenous people's issues and concerns for justice and not poisoning local waterways if indigenous people live there. But the reality is the area we MINE is nothing compared to the area we FARM. Which is why I find your scepticism about Precision Fermentation also troubling! On the one hand you're saying "Stop the modern world - we CANNOT have abundant energy!" But on the other hand - you're sceptical about PF which could return hundreds of times more land to nature? I'm confused.

"Low-energy is the future, either through choice or physics. We are running out of time to have a say. "

Only if you believe the Doomers. We could quickly electrify mining if we had to by rigging up overhead cables and converting all trucks to trolley-trucks!

I love this next mining truck that carries its ore downhill - on regenerative breaking the whole way - and so NEVER needs to be charged. In fact - with this route - it has SURPLUS power to feed back into the grid!

https://www.emobility-engineering.com/electric-truck-mines-own-energy/

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There can be little doubt that if our era is objectively chronicled, it will be marked by escalating, corrupt opportunism – destructive, exploitative practices being rewarded rather than punished. As the injustices of abusing the common good repeatedly go uncorrected, victims grow cynically disengaged while grifters are emboldened and empowered. When justice is flagrantly denied through politically sanctioned exploitation, oppression undermines democracy and our future is in dire jeopardy

David Kyler

Center for a Sustainable Coast

Saint Simons Island, Georgia

912.689.4471

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true

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Thanks Rachel for this piece. What I like most of all is your call for using remaining reserves for building a new generation of infrastructure. I wanna add to this by saying that (because of my background in chemistry) my thoughts have changed about plastics. My new hypothesis (untested) is that they are energy intensive, but not by mass of material produced because they're so light. So, it may be worth extracting oil BUT NOT BURNING IT. We desperately need long-lived plastics in so many basic products (both low and high tech). Chemists are working on creating plant-based plastics but that's likely a ways off. I think the approach of reserving oil for materials production will be a carrot for oil companies here. Bottom line... use oil as the feedstock that it is for things we will need during the transition. That's what I like about Rachel's apporach. This is not about preserving greenwashed industrial life or a technologized fantasy solution. Rather, this is about charting a path for transition over 175 years, or 7 generations.

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What does Alister Hamilton have to say about North Sea CO2 storage for CCS and BECCS? What does he have to say about the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative plans? 'Securing a green recovery on a path to net zero: climate change plan 2018–2032 - update' - "3.8.4 As this list shows, CCS is an essential part of any NETs project. Our strategy for delivering NETs will be built around our support for a flexible and adaptable CCS system in Scotland, capable of transporting carbon from industrial or electricity generation sites in Scotland to storage in the North Sea." https://www.gov.scot/publications/securing-green-recovery-path-net-zero-update-climate-change-plan-20182032/pages/14/

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