So the aggregate numbers don’t show it, but he just choses to believe it because he’s a pollyanna.
Renewable energy is making significant headway in new power generation. The problem is that the increased supply is being met with new demand from manufacturing and data centers. If we can reduce that demand as we continue to build out renewables, we can decommission fossil fuel power generation at huge rates. The sooner we can set up regulations to prevent capitalists from just setting up more demand where this cheaper energy is produced, the sooner we can meet the goals clean energy production meant to achieve.
If we can reduce that demand as we continue to build out renewables, we can decommission fossil fuel power generation at huge rates.
One point the author makes is that the data obscures a real phenomenon where switching from an inefficient fossil fuel source to an efficient renewable to do the exact same task actually already reduces the demand for energy.
For example, switching from a car that gets 30 miles per gallon to an electric that gets 3.3 miles per kWh, for a person who drives the American average of 12,000 miles per year, will switch from 400 gallons of gasoline to 3,636 kWh. The energy content of gasoline is 33.4 kWh/gallon, so that’s a drop in demand from 13,364 kWh to 3,636 kWh, a 72.8% drop in energy consumption while not changing any actual behavior.
Similar analysis can be done for replacing on-premise fossil fuel combustion with heat pumps for heating buildings and heating water and cooking food. Each of these ends up bringing off-grid fossil fuel use to on-grid electricity use, so that although there is demand destruction overall, that is still an increase in demand on the grid itself, so that looking at the grid stats alone obscures a huge shift.
And the feedback loop on these accelerating changes will make for interesting, somewhat unpredictable results, if the supply chain for gasoline and diesel starts feeling economic pinch in certain places, it may further accelerate adoption and actually close down certain routes for fossil fuel supplies.
With large scale battery projects being built at record pace, where more than half of the battery capacity on US grids was built in the last 2 years (maybe less), we can expect to see the economics of solar energy also push for accelerated adoption even in the face of regulatory resistance from the Trump administration.
The goal is not to have a 100% clean electricity grid, but to not use fossil fuels at all. The problem with that is that a lot of fossil fuel consumption is best replaced by an electrical alternative. For example the combustion engine in a car with a battery powered electric drive train or gas heating with a heat pump. So we are unlikely to reduce that demand in the short term.
If we can reduce that demand as we continue to build out renewables, we can decommission fossil fuel power generation at huge rates.
That’s a fine idea but wouldn’t it be better to build out renewables specifically to decommission fossil generation.
That’s what I’m saying we’ve been doing, except that demand has increased so the fossil fuels stay online instead of getting decommissioned.
It’s the ‘spending will increase to match your income thing’ that many experience in their twenties, but writ large by billionaires who got there by scamming (and extracting wealth from the masses).
And I think it’s no coincidence that this is when we’re seeing a big AI push. We’ve had machine learning for at least 20 years now but have had to be precious about the resources we can afford to go to that kind of compute (I still remember “donating” my screensaver compute time to SETI and genetics processing). Now that it’s not completely unfeasable thanks to renewable energy, every tech company and their mom is all in. We truly need an energy budget for the planet or we’re just going to be circling the drain indefinitely.
Now that it’s not completely unfeasable thanks to renewable energy
Are we living in the same reality? Renewable energy has nothing to do with machine learning or especially LLMs being feasible. The data centers used/being built for AI use some of the dirtiest form of energy you can use, because it’s cheaper or easier available.
Point in case: Data centers are being built off-grid using gas turbines. In fact, the planned amount of gas-powered data centers use more electricity than Germany.
They don’t care about the power use of their data centers, and especially not whether they are renewable.
I think you’ve misunderstood my point here. I’m not saying that data centers care about renewable energy, quite the opposite. I’m saying that the buildout of renewables has lead to enough surplus energy (in the intention to replace fossil fuels) such that tech companies said, what if we use that cheap power instead, and built up the demand for that power such that fossil fuels are not decommissioned but even increased like you pointed out. Off-grid power for data centers is because this demand is outstripping even the excess supply right now because everyone is demanding a piece of the pie. It’s wholly unsustainable and when it hits a wall it is going to be ugly.
We won’t circle the drain indefinetly, we’ll collapse at some point
We truly need an energy budget for the planet or we’re just going to be circling the drain indefinitely.
Sure would be nice, unlikely without a world government, which would likely be bad as centralization of power tends to be, but likely better than Pax Americana. Solidarity and sympathy.
