I really appreciate this work. I’ve been looking into some of the same questions recently, but like you say everything I’ve been able to find up to now seem very siloed and fail to take into account all of the potentially important issues. To convince people of your thesis though, I think it needs more of the following:
Discussion of more energy transition scenarios and their potential obstacles. It currently focuses a lot on the impossibility of using batteries to store 1 month worth of electricity, but I’m guessing that it might be much more realistic to use batteries only for daily storage, with seasonal/longer term variations being handled by a combination of overcapacity and fossil fuel backup, or by adaptation on the demand side.
Discussion of counterarguments to your positions. You already do some of this (e.g. “Dave finds it pessimistic, he thinks they give too much importance to land use and climate impacts, and that the model should have higher efficiency and growth of renewables.”) but would appreciate more details of the counterarguments and why you still disagree with them.
In the long run, why is it impossible to build an abundant energy system using only highly available minerals? It seems like your main argument here is that renewables have low EROI, but why can’t we greatly improve that in the future? For example, if much of the current energy investment into renewables goes to spending energy on maintaining living standards that workers demand (I don’t know if this is actually true or not), we could potentially lower that amount by increasing automation. What are the fundamental limits to such improvements?
Thanks for this feedback! This is really useful, it can help me to improve.
This could be a good idea, making different scenarios could clarify things, indeed. I think I will do that.
I didn’t have the impression that I focused so much on battery storage, however—I talk about it for metals, but the issue of metal scarcity spans is valid for many technologies. For me, the biggest issue is manufacturing: hard to change at the speed required, requiring a lot of investment, and leading to considerable losses in efficiency.
For seasonal storage specifically, I wouldn’t count on finite fossil fuels, and overcapacity is both energy costly (building even more of what we have) and has limited potential (the “one month of storage required” already is for a “supergrid” over the Mediterranean sea). Adapting demand would work better, but I don’t know to which extent this can be done—factories need to be used 60-90% of the time to pay for the investment cost.
Same, good idea. I though about detailing common counterarguments but everything seemed very long already. But doing so could also clarify things. How do you suggest I do this? Making a new post with scenarios and counterarguments ? Or editing the existing ones ?
This is an interesting question, and it could be an additional kind of scenario that would not take into account the issue of time. There are several reasons I see limits to that, but a main limit is low EROI, indeed. There are 2 different opposing trends: on one side, EROI can improve because of technological progress—but on the other, EROI will likely be lower because of declining metal ores, storage, and the need to replace transportation and roads and manufacturing with less efficient solutions (like hydrogen).
Another question I have is whether we can maintain our complex society at all with only abundant metals, as the others will face declining trends: for instance, a smartphone uses 60 different metals in the periodic table. Computers are also very complex. They would be required for a lot of automation. I don’t think that can be sustainable, or only at a much smaller scale.
I really appreciate this work. I’ve been looking into some of the same questions recently, but like you say everything I’ve been able to find up to now seem very siloed and fail to take into account all of the potentially important issues. To convince people of your thesis though, I think it needs more of the following:
Discussion of more energy transition scenarios and their potential obstacles. It currently focuses a lot on the impossibility of using batteries to store 1 month worth of electricity, but I’m guessing that it might be much more realistic to use batteries only for daily storage, with seasonal/longer term variations being handled by a combination of overcapacity and fossil fuel backup, or by adaptation on the demand side.
Discussion of counterarguments to your positions. You already do some of this (e.g. “Dave finds it pessimistic, he thinks they give too much importance to land use and climate impacts, and that the model should have higher efficiency and growth of renewables.”) but would appreciate more details of the counterarguments and why you still disagree with them.
In the long run, why is it impossible to build an abundant energy system using only highly available minerals? It seems like your main argument here is that renewables have low EROI, but why can’t we greatly improve that in the future? For example, if much of the current energy investment into renewables goes to spending energy on maintaining living standards that workers demand (I don’t know if this is actually true or not), we could potentially lower that amount by increasing automation. What are the fundamental limits to such improvements?
Thanks for this feedback! This is really useful, it can help me to improve.
This could be a good idea, making different scenarios could clarify things, indeed. I think I will do that.
I didn’t have the impression that I focused so much on battery storage, however—I talk about it for metals, but the issue of metal scarcity spans is valid for many technologies. For me, the biggest issue is manufacturing: hard to change at the speed required, requiring a lot of investment, and leading to considerable losses in efficiency.
For seasonal storage specifically, I wouldn’t count on finite fossil fuels, and overcapacity is both energy costly (building even more of what we have) and has limited potential (the “one month of storage required” already is for a “supergrid” over the Mediterranean sea). Adapting demand would work better, but I don’t know to which extent this can be done—factories need to be used 60-90% of the time to pay for the investment cost.
Same, good idea. I though about detailing common counterarguments but everything seemed very long already. But doing so could also clarify things. How do you suggest I do this? Making a new post with scenarios and counterarguments ? Or editing the existing ones ?
This is an interesting question, and it could be an additional kind of scenario that would not take into account the issue of time. There are several reasons I see limits to that, but a main limit is low EROI, indeed. There are 2 different opposing trends: on one side, EROI can improve because of technological progress—but on the other, EROI will likely be lower because of declining metal ores, storage, and the need to replace transportation and roads and manufacturing with less efficient solutions (like hydrogen).
Another question I have is whether we can maintain our complex society at all with only abundant metals, as the others will face declining trends: for instance, a smartphone uses 60 different metals in the periodic table. Computers are also very complex. They would be required for a lot of automation. I don’t think that can be sustainable, or only at a much smaller scale.