ozzy43

Renewable Energy: The Next Economic Boom

This snippet is misleading due to the implicit assumption it makes:

"...by 2050, power consumption is likely to have risen to 30 terawatts."

This should have said, 'based on current trends, demand for power is projected to rise to 30 TW'. The fact is, as any petroleum geologist will tell you (except for a few crazies in the Soviet Union who maintain oil is abiotic in its origins - and if you believe them I have some oceanfront property here in Phoenix I'll sell you), oil is a finite and non-renewable resource, and as many of these self-same geologists are now saying, we're past, at, or very near, the peak for oil. Which does not mean that oil is going away, but that cheap, easy to get to oil is going away. Current plans call for the Saudis to double or triple their output by dozens of millions of barrels per day to meet future demands - but they can barely seem to squeeze half a million extra out these days.

The point is this: all of the renewables depend on fossil fuels - whether for the mining or farming or extraction or manufacturing operations, as well as transport. Try generating hydrogen, mining - and then extracting oil from - tar sands, or manufacturing a solar cell array or a wind turbine (and then transporting any of it) - without cheap fossil fuels. There is no renewable form of energy (or energy storage) that can be swapped in for fossil fuels in the short term span of time geologists say we have - it would take decades and we don't have decades to replace this fundamental - foundational - piece of infrastructure, upon which everything else runs and depends.

It is a statement of fact to assert that power consumption cannot grow beyond power supply. Therefore whatever the power consumption will be in 2050 will most assuredly depend utterly on the supplies and types of energy which are available to be harnessed. Oxen and horses for much of the world, most probably. I doubt it will amount to 30 terawatts.

But if it helps you sleep at night, by all means feel free to believe that oil is an infinitely renewable resource. And get back to me about that property in Phoenix while you're at it...