Congrats Hannah!! So well deserved and thank you for using data, presented and interpreted so clearly to inspire and motivate the rest of us to do what we can to make difference in our own lifetimes. You are just getting started! Please don’t retire!!
Congrats for a well earned membership in the Royal Statistical Society!
Encouraging slides for sure, especially the rise of electrification in China.
Unfortunate but typical for the RMI is the dismissal of nuclear power, even calling for abandoning investment in it on slide 80. They also completely missed the massive vibe shift across the world of the last 3 years, which positions nuclear well for contributing a lot of green energy growth in the 2030s and beyond.
RMI is purposefully confusing writing "Electric vehicles need 3 to 4 times less energy than petrol ones. Electric heat pumps are around 3 times as efficient as a gas boiler." Electric energy and heat energy are quite different forms of energy. Converting electricity to heat is so simple a toaster can do it. Maxwell's daemon, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and Carnot's theorem all illustrate the reverse is not possible, BUT one can use the FLOW of heat from hot to cold to make work (or electricity). The max fraction converted to work depends on the hot-cold temperature difference. The rest is REJECTED heat, not wasted, because math/physics/chemistry rule. See lecture slides at ElectrifyingOurWorld.com for more, or New Nuclear is HOT!
Agreed - the adjustment is appropriate when stacking charts of one against the other - what we care about is the useful energy delivered, which makes primary energy a poor metric to begin with.
What fraction of the electricity utilized in 2030 do you envision would come from renewables? Besides the conventional hydro and biomass what renewables will be generating all that energy? Given that wind and solar are the only immediately available renewables to answer that question what will be the cost and environmental impact of mining the volume of minerals required to fabricate that quantity of renewables? And we haven't even touched on the subject of energy storage or the effect on the grid of the high level of intermittency inherent in the wind and solar generation you might envision.
I'm afraid I don't see the point of comparing the efficiency of using one energy source with the efficiency of using a completely different energy source. It seems like those comparisons merely distract us from the comparisons that matter: cost, availability, carbon emissions, toxic pollutants, land use, and so on.
Ironically, it was Amory Lovins who pointed out that people don't care about energy per se; we care about hot showers, cold beer, comfort, mobility, and so on. By the same token, there's no reason to care about efficiency per se.
Also, it's uninformative to say the efficiencies of solar and wind are 100% by definition. PV panels are about 20% efficient at capturing the solar energy that strikes them. Wind turbines are about 40% efficient at capturing the kinetic energy of the air that passes through the circle swept out by the blades. These numbers are meaningful because it may be possible to increase them and that would be good. But I still wouldn't see any point in comparing them to each other, or to the efficiency of a fossil or nuclear power plant.
It matters because skeptics of renewables try to point out how massive the amount of primary energy we need to replace in the system with renewables when in fact we need to replace only the final energy since renewables output final energy. So the goalposts become a lot more feasible in that correct framing of the problem.
I guess I could see the point of this if I commonly saw the arguments of these skeptics you refer to, and if they were specifically using numbers that neglect these "efficiency" gains. But if I've ever seen even one example of that, I can't recall it and it must have been years ago. Can you point me to any examples? Is it a European thing? (I'm in the US, and RMI is based here too.)
I really don't think final energy (let alone useful energy) is mentioned enough. I have seen way more that says replacing whatever amounts of coal BTUs with solar and wind is impossible. Whatever a solar panel is rated is the amount of usable energy that comes out, it's generated to usable power is nearly 100%. Coal's BTUs to usable electricity is nowhere near that. The solar panel's efficiency doesn't really matter in this type of comparison.
It'd be nice if the Rock Mountain Institute is right this time. But I doubt it. There are several technologies that could soak up new generation as quickly as it can be installed, keeping demand and the price relatively high: large language models, green hydrogen production, and direct reduction steelmaking spring to mind. That's leaving aside bitcoin mining and its ilk.
Yesterday I saw a news item that said for the next generation of LLMs, tech companies are focusing on building new generation capacity more than on the data centres themselves. It said their electricity consumption could be 20 percent of the US total (four percent of the world)
I am confused about this kind of reporting of difference: "Electric vehicles need 3 to 4 times less energy than petrol ones." Does this mean 1/3 to 1/4 as much energy? It feels less clear to use "times" as a way to say something is smaller.
I'm not sure what to make of the electrification of buildings chart. Did buildings just start using more appliances? Since the 70s was there a lot of economic development in warmer countries leading to an increase in air conditioner (which were always electric) vs gas boilers? A chart breaking electric heating vs fossil heating would provide better information.
Same with industry. Was there just a shift in the types of stuff being manufactured? Like more textiles and not as much food processing? Idk. Again a better breakdown would be the progress in the electrification of industrial heat.
Also what is causing the electrification in China? More heat pumps in buildings and industry?
RMI glosses over many of the restraints on renewables. Intermittency and seasonal variation cannot easily be dismissed. There is an intrinsic value in the reliability of 24/7 constant electrical energy supply for industries that transcends LCOE calculations. Industries such as data centers and aluminum smelters for instance.
The solutions are; renewable overbuild with extensive transmission costs, storage both short term and long term, and base load thermal generators such as gas or nuclear. The cost of a reliable electricity supply system is the sum of many parts. Exponential growth in renewables is predicated by an extensive supply chain: more mining and a more circular economy where key raw metals and materials are recycled. The time frame and extrapolation curves are overly optimistic.
Congrats Hannah!! So well deserved and thank you for using data, presented and interpreted so clearly to inspire and motivate the rest of us to do what we can to make difference in our own lifetimes. You are just getting started! Please don’t retire!!
Congrats for a well earned membership in the Royal Statistical Society!
Encouraging slides for sure, especially the rise of electrification in China.
Unfortunate but typical for the RMI is the dismissal of nuclear power, even calling for abandoning investment in it on slide 80. They also completely missed the massive vibe shift across the world of the last 3 years, which positions nuclear well for contributing a lot of green energy growth in the 2030s and beyond.
RMI is purposefully confusing writing "Electric vehicles need 3 to 4 times less energy than petrol ones. Electric heat pumps are around 3 times as efficient as a gas boiler." Electric energy and heat energy are quite different forms of energy. Converting electricity to heat is so simple a toaster can do it. Maxwell's daemon, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and Carnot's theorem all illustrate the reverse is not possible, BUT one can use the FLOW of heat from hot to cold to make work (or electricity). The max fraction converted to work depends on the hot-cold temperature difference. The rest is REJECTED heat, not wasted, because math/physics/chemistry rule. See lecture slides at ElectrifyingOurWorld.com for more, or New Nuclear is HOT!
One could similarly complain that solar panels only convert 20% of sunlight into electricity and waste the rest. All apples and oranges.
Agreed - the adjustment is appropriate when stacking charts of one against the other - what we care about is the useful energy delivered, which makes primary energy a poor metric to begin with.
Congratulations on the award, and thanks for the very informative- and positive- post!
What fraction of the electricity utilized in 2030 do you envision would come from renewables? Besides the conventional hydro and biomass what renewables will be generating all that energy? Given that wind and solar are the only immediately available renewables to answer that question what will be the cost and environmental impact of mining the volume of minerals required to fabricate that quantity of renewables? And we haven't even touched on the subject of energy storage or the effect on the grid of the high level of intermittency inherent in the wind and solar generation you might envision.
I'm afraid I don't see the point of comparing the efficiency of using one energy source with the efficiency of using a completely different energy source. It seems like those comparisons merely distract us from the comparisons that matter: cost, availability, carbon emissions, toxic pollutants, land use, and so on.
Ironically, it was Amory Lovins who pointed out that people don't care about energy per se; we care about hot showers, cold beer, comfort, mobility, and so on. By the same token, there's no reason to care about efficiency per se.
Also, it's uninformative to say the efficiencies of solar and wind are 100% by definition. PV panels are about 20% efficient at capturing the solar energy that strikes them. Wind turbines are about 40% efficient at capturing the kinetic energy of the air that passes through the circle swept out by the blades. These numbers are meaningful because it may be possible to increase them and that would be good. But I still wouldn't see any point in comparing them to each other, or to the efficiency of a fossil or nuclear power plant.
It matters because skeptics of renewables try to point out how massive the amount of primary energy we need to replace in the system with renewables when in fact we need to replace only the final energy since renewables output final energy. So the goalposts become a lot more feasible in that correct framing of the problem.
I guess I could see the point of this if I commonly saw the arguments of these skeptics you refer to, and if they were specifically using numbers that neglect these "efficiency" gains. But if I've ever seen even one example of that, I can't recall it and it must have been years ago. Can you point me to any examples? Is it a European thing? (I'm in the US, and RMI is based here too.)
I really don't think final energy (let alone useful energy) is mentioned enough. I have seen way more that says replacing whatever amounts of coal BTUs with solar and wind is impossible. Whatever a solar panel is rated is the amount of usable energy that comes out, it's generated to usable power is nearly 100%. Coal's BTUs to usable electricity is nowhere near that. The solar panel's efficiency doesn't really matter in this type of comparison.
It'd be nice if the Rock Mountain Institute is right this time. But I doubt it. There are several technologies that could soak up new generation as quickly as it can be installed, keeping demand and the price relatively high: large language models, green hydrogen production, and direct reduction steelmaking spring to mind. That's leaving aside bitcoin mining and its ilk.
Yesterday I saw a news item that said for the next generation of LLMs, tech companies are focusing on building new generation capacity more than on the data centres themselves. It said their electricity consumption could be 20 percent of the US total (four percent of the world)
Congrats, Hannah! I know so many people who've been been encouraged to take action because of your book and/or blog!
I am confused about this kind of reporting of difference: "Electric vehicles need 3 to 4 times less energy than petrol ones." Does this mean 1/3 to 1/4 as much energy? It feels less clear to use "times" as a way to say something is smaller.
I'm not sure what to make of the electrification of buildings chart. Did buildings just start using more appliances? Since the 70s was there a lot of economic development in warmer countries leading to an increase in air conditioner (which were always electric) vs gas boilers? A chart breaking electric heating vs fossil heating would provide better information.
Same with industry. Was there just a shift in the types of stuff being manufactured? Like more textiles and not as much food processing? Idk. Again a better breakdown would be the progress in the electrification of industrial heat.
Also what is causing the electrification in China? More heat pumps in buildings and industry?
Another aspect could be that heating systems are getting more efficient faster than electric systems. This hypothesis is unlikely I'd imagine.
Congratulations. Thank you for the article and I suddenly feel very old :)
Great article with really powerful graphics
I love the article except the label of the x axis on the chart that shows China’s rate of electrification says 2010 twice in a row. Graph error?
RMI glosses over many of the restraints on renewables. Intermittency and seasonal variation cannot easily be dismissed. There is an intrinsic value in the reliability of 24/7 constant electrical energy supply for industries that transcends LCOE calculations. Industries such as data centers and aluminum smelters for instance.
The solutions are; renewable overbuild with extensive transmission costs, storage both short term and long term, and base load thermal generators such as gas or nuclear. The cost of a reliable electricity supply system is the sum of many parts. Exponential growth in renewables is predicated by an extensive supply chain: more mining and a more circular economy where key raw metals and materials are recycled. The time frame and extrapolation curves are overly optimistic.
It’s so great to read such a positive post. Thank you!
:)