The “Energy Transition” Delusion: A Reality Reset

Bottomline: The “energy transition” continues to receive thunderous applause from numerous politicians and “green energy” groups, an exercise in groupthink fantasy amazing to behold. For those with actual lives to live and demanding affordable and reliable energy, the energy transition is a massive shift, wholly artificial and politicized, from conventional energy to that which is expensive and unreliable. These “new technologies” like wind, solar, and electric cars, with the first two literally having been utilized for thousands of years, are also deeply problematic environmentally in terms of toxic metal pollution, wildlife destruction, land use massive and unsightly, emissions of conventional pollutants. In a larger context, pursuing them will result in inexorable reductions in aggregate wealth and thus the social willingness to invest in environmental protection. For “going green,” all that glitters is hardly gold. 

When it comes to energy and climate, the fantasists are impervious to reality, until the massive costs and dislocations and absurdities become impossible to ignore. 

Those pushing wind and solar power and electric cars running on batteries argue that the emerging problems are little more than growing pains attendant upon short run rigidities, and all will be well given some more time and more subsidies. 

The obstacles confronting the “energy transition” are fundamental. 

The reality is that these problems are caused by the very nature of unconventional energy. 

They are driven by massive costs, technical and engineering realities, severe constraints in terms of needed physical inputs, and at a political level growing local opposition to the unconventional energy facilities central to the “energy transition.” 

In these circumstances, policymakers are beginning to grasp the enormous difficulty of replacing even a mere 10% share of global hydrocarbons. 

Not to mention the impossibility of trying to replace all of society’s use of hydrocarbons with solar, wind, and battery (SWB) technologies. 

Two decades of aspirational policies and trillions of dollars in spending, most of it on SWB tech, have not yielded an “energy transition” that comes even close to eliminating hydrocarbons. 

Regardless of climate-inspired motivations, it is a dangerous delusion to believe that spending yet more, and more quickly, will do so. 

The lessons of the recent decade make it clear that SWB technologies cannot be surged in times of need, are neither inherently “clean” nor even independent of hydrocarbons, and are not cheap.

The unrealistic green dream of SWB only might be best exemplified by such Western progressive thinking that has so strongly emerged in the face of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

They demand: the most effective way to reduce demand for Russian fossil fuels – which are paying for Putin’s war on Ukraine – is to reduce dependence on all fossil fuels.

But, the facts are clear: SWB technologies are incapable of “displacing fossil fuels” and are far more “supplemental” than “alternative.” 

Findings: 

1. Even the rich nations that have pursued power grids with a higher share of wind and solar electricity uniformly have experienced large increases in electricity costs, and even that effect hides the costs of the massive subsidies borne by taxpayers.
2. It costs at least $30 to store the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil using lithium batteries, which explains why batteries cannot compensate for the unreliable nature of wind and solar power even for days, let alone weeks. “There is no physics, never mind engineering or economies of scale” that would overcome this cost disadvantage.
3. The time cost alone of recharging an electric vehicle makes such vehicles uncompetitive, even apart from the costs of the batteries and other problems.
4. The International Energy Agency estimates that only a partial energy transition would require increases in the supplies of lithium, graphite, nickel, and rare earths by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900%, and 700%, respectively, by 2040. 
5. This staggering problem of materials is “inherent in the nature of SWB technologies,” which means that the cost of unconventional energy will rise even more moving forward. 

Read the full study here.