Except that electricity is not being used for large scale industrial processes like firing cement, bricks, glass, producing steel from ore, ferrosilicon or nitrogen fertilizer, etc.
Also, recycling steel/aluminium/glass are easier to switch to electric furnaces than production from raw materials, so as production shifts towards reuse it will provide a double benefit.
We’re not replacing fossil anywhere right now. Absolute fossil energy use grows and the renewable energy grows, while the fossil fraction remains effectively constant at about 80%
Efficiency actually increases resource use, aka Jevon’s paradox. And high-exergy energy sources don’t help with high temperature (hence no heat pumps) industrial processes, high density energy sources (aircraft, ships, trucking and agriculture) and for chemical processes (air nitrogen fixation, steel). Also, current renewables have critically low EROEI (particularly when dispatchable) and cannot sustain their own infrastructure, being currently fossil fuel extenders, or multipliers.
This doesn’t mean we need to rather use fossil fuel sources, since we’re already in the tail end of the fossil age, and the decline will be swift.
I am hoping that hydrogen can fill that gap. There is a lot wrong with it, but it can burn like gas and Europe has been building a bunch of infrastructure for it. I don’t think it is suitable for consumers like they tried to push with hydrogen car ideas, but it seems like it would have its place with large electrolysis solar stations on industrial rooftops and compressors inside.
Unfortunately, the EU is only talking about hydrogen infrastructure, not building it. And they are also planning to kill off natgas edge infrastructure, which is suitable at least for hydrogen-natgas blends.
Except that electricity is not being used for large scale industrial processes like firing cement, bricks, glass, producing steel from ore, ferrosilicon or nitrogen fertilizer, etc.
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Also, recycling steel/aluminium/glass are easier to switch to electric furnaces than production from raw materials, so as production shifts towards reuse it will provide a double benefit.
We’re not replacing fossil anywhere right now. Absolute fossil energy use grows and the renewable energy grows, while the fossil fraction remains effectively constant at about 80%
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I make most of my net electricity demand. But there is no energy transition visible in the world primary energy use.
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https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
It’s a lot harder to see in primary energy use because fossil fuel use involves wasting 35% to 90% of the available energy. The impact of renewables is far larger when you look at useful energy
We might actually be at or near the point where fossil fuel use starts to fall, but that outcome is far from guaranteed
Efficiency actually increases resource use, aka Jevon’s paradox. And high-exergy energy sources don’t help with high temperature (hence no heat pumps) industrial processes, high density energy sources (aircraft, ships, trucking and agriculture) and for chemical processes (air nitrogen fixation, steel). Also, current renewables have critically low EROEI (particularly when dispatchable) and cannot sustain their own infrastructure, being currently fossil fuel extenders, or multipliers.
This doesn’t mean we need to rather use fossil fuel sources, since we’re already in the tail end of the fossil age, and the decline will be swift.
I am hoping that hydrogen can fill that gap. There is a lot wrong with it, but it can burn like gas and Europe has been building a bunch of infrastructure for it. I don’t think it is suitable for consumers like they tried to push with hydrogen car ideas, but it seems like it would have its place with large electrolysis solar stations on industrial rooftops and compressors inside.
Unfortunately, the EU is only talking about hydrogen infrastructure, not building it. And they are also planning to kill off natgas edge infrastructure, which is suitable at least for hydrogen-natgas blends.