> Primary energy demand is going to shrink, not grow.
What? Absolutely nobody is predicting a shrinking primary energy demand. You can hand-wave and say "yeah but electrification", but nobody is predicting a decline in global demand before 2050, if at all this century. I'd argue that demand will more than make up for the efficiency gains as we've seen in the past - look at the growth in deployment of electricity-hungry GPUs as one example of robust demand growth.
It also doesn't matter if US demand shrinks if China and India more than make up the difference. The planet doesn't care what country CO2 emissions come from.
> The truth is that the transition is happening
Who said otherwise? Nobody is arguing that renewables aren't growing.
Vaclav Smil's argument is that historical evidence strongly suggests that primary energy transitions take a lot longer than people want to think, and even as the renewable share of energy is growing the absolute demand for fossil fuels is still increasing. Again, the planet doesn't care about relative share.
People who believe the future will somehow be different from the past (like you) need to provide extraordinary evidence for why they believe this will be the case, and there is none. Installing solar panels, or wind turbines, or upgrading distribution lines, or selling electric vehicles all do not follow any kind of Moores law-like curve, so what factors would drive future results to be different?
Maybe robots will install solar panels faster than humans? Like what's the thesis here?
You can live in a fantasy world and cling to wishful thinking, but it will be a great recipe for mass disillusionment when activists are selling a vision of the future that is at odds with reality.
> Primary energy demand is going to shrink, not grow.
What? Absolutely nobody is predicting a shrinking primary energy demand. You can hand-wave and say "yeah but electrification", but nobody is predicting a decline in global demand before 2050, if at all this century. I'd argue that demand will more than make up for the efficiency gains as we've seen in the past - look at the growth in deployment of electricity-hungry GPUs as one example of robust demand growth.
It also doesn't matter if US demand shrinks if China and India more than make up the difference. The planet doesn't care what country CO2 emissions come from.
> The truth is that the transition is happening
Who said otherwise? Nobody is arguing that renewables aren't growing.
Vaclav Smil's argument is that historical evidence strongly suggests that primary energy transitions take a lot longer than people want to think, and even as the renewable share of energy is growing the absolute demand for fossil fuels is still increasing. Again, the planet doesn't care about relative share.
People who believe the future will somehow be different from the past (like you) need to provide extraordinary evidence for why they believe this will be the case, and there is none. Installing solar panels, or wind turbines, or upgrading distribution lines, or selling electric vehicles all do not follow any kind of Moores law-like curve, so what factors would drive future results to be different?
Maybe robots will install solar panels faster than humans? Like what's the thesis here?
You can live in a fantasy world and cling to wishful thinking, but it will be a great recipe for mass disillusionment when activists are selling a vision of the future that is at odds with reality.