These days, we are constantly assured that our leaders and experts will do what’s necessary to promptly eliminate climate change, and open the gate to a clean green renewable utopia. A golden bonus is that spending staggering amounts of money to radically alter the energy-related infrastructure of the entire world will be great for the economy, thrill investors, and create jobs, jobs, jobs! If we have a fervent blind faith in this miracle, we can relax, keep our lives on autopilot, and shop till we drop.
According to bright green dreams, the answer to all our
prayers is to simply abandon fossil energy right away, and power the global
economy with wholesome carbon-free renewable electricity. Not everyone agrees. The mainstream media, and many environmental
activists, have yet to acknowledge the grumpy skeptics who assert that it’s
impossible for today’s industrial civilization, as we know it, to be entirely powered
by any flavor of electricity, whether renewable or conventional.
Megan
Seibert and William E. Rees explained why.
Their report relied heavily on research by Alice
Friedemann. Only fossil fuel can
generate the intense heat needed to mass produce stuff like steel, concrete,
silicon, and so on. It’s also essential
for keeping the current transport system on life support (trucks, trains,
ships, planes, cars, etc.) — both manufacturing the machines, and fueling their
lifetime operation. A team led by Derrick
Jensen focused additional attention on bright green hopium.
And now, at long last (sorry!), I shall get to the point of
my message. I recently learned about a
thousand page report created by the Geological Survey of Finland, a government
agency that employs 400 experts. Geologists
don’t believe in miracles, they believe in minerals — finite nonrenewable
substances, resources that are diminished with each scoop of the power
shovels. Every passing year, the
reserves get smaller, lower in quality, and more expensive to extract.
The Finnish geologists wondered if seemingly unbelievable miracles
were actually possible in reality. They
contemplated what modifications would be needed to 2019 technology, in order to
create a perfectly sustainable utopia by 2050.
The theoretical transition required super-massive global changes to be
made in an unimaginably super-speedy manner.
The heroic geologists stumbled upon an important discovery. One minor detail had somehow been overlooked
by the clean green renewable dreamers. Their
primary focus had been on carbon, climate, positive thinking, and saving the
world. It seems there was little or no
awareness that the miraculous global transition required huge amounts of specific
minerals. Some of the essential minerals
were needed in quantities that far exceeded the world’s known resources and
reserves. The titanic dream smacked into
an iceberg. The geologist’s report
focused on three subject areas: transport, electricity generation, and industrial
manufacturing.
[A quick vocabulary lesson.
“Reserves” are the amount of a resource that can profitably be extracted
with existing technology at current prices.
“Resources” are the currently known amount of a resource, only a portion
of which can be considered reserves.]
The Finnish report explained that the planet-thrashing
monster we have created took more than a century to become uncontrollably catastrophic. It was only made possible by guzzling
staggering amounts of cheap and abundant oil, an extremely energy dense fuel. Our monster has devoured massive amounts of
high quality mineral resources. At the
peak of the joyride, folks in wealthy nations enjoyed a fantastic orgy of utterly
idiotic waste.
And now, the monster must be ethically euthanized as soon as
possible. Energy is no longer cheap. Mineral resources are lower in quality, and far
less abundant. Financial systems are
loaded with debts, and full of surprises.
The planet’s ecosystems are disintegrating in front of our eyes, as the
population explosion continues soaring. World
leaders are busy butting heads, shooting missiles, and cutting throats. Alas, the Finnish geologists are not giddy
with optimism for a quick and easy bright green future.
In the global energy system of 2018, fossil fuels provided
84.7% of the power, nuclear was 10.1%, and renewables were just 4.05% (solar,
wind, geothermal, hydro, biofuels, etc.).
In other words, nonrenewable energy (fossil + nuke) provided about 95%
of the monster’s life force. The
geologists focused on energy processes that involved minerals. So, they didn’t mention humankind’s original energy
resource, muscle power — it’s not a wildly exciting alternative, but it has a
promising future. Imagine everyone wearing
bright green MAWA hats (Make America Walk Again).
Obviously, transport systems should rapidly eliminate carbon
belching Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) technology. Most green dreamers envision a shift to
Electric Vehicle (EV) technology that utilizes rechargeable batteries or fuel
cells.
EVs are a very trendy idea today. Battery powered EVs are charged with
electricity from the grid. But if the
grid is delivering electricity that’s maybe 95% nonrenewable, that’s what their
batteries will be charged with. How
green is that? Of course, an EV’s frame,
fenders, battery, motor, etc., are not made of harmless green fairy dust. Neither are solar panels, wind turbines, or
roadways made of asphalt or concrete.
Walking has far less impact.
Fuel cell powered EVs use a chemical reaction to generate
electricity from hydrogen. During
operation, they emit only water. Hydrogen
in pure form does not exist in the natural world. Energy is required to separate hydrogen from
other compounds. The U.S. Department of
Energy says that about 95% of hydrogen is made by processing natural gas (CH4). The Finnish report mentioned an uncomfortable
fact: “A potential downside is that much less electricity is harvested from
hydrogen in a fuel cell than the electricity required to produce that same
volume of hydrogen.”
In 2019, the global transport fleet included about 1.416
billion cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles, of which 1.39 billion were
ICE. These ICE machines need to be sent
to the crusher as soon as possible. Is
it possible (or ecologically intelligent) to replace them with EVs?
Batteries are a serious challenge for both transport and electricity
generation. I’ll chat more about
batteries shortly. First, let’s take a
peek at electricity generation. It produces
energy that is the life force of the grid, the stuff that lights the night,
powers appliances, and entrances glowing screen zombies. As mentioned, electricity generation is currently
fueled by energy that is maybe 95% nonrenewable, a huge drawback.
Currently, the grid is designed to reliably distribute
electricity from large centralized power plants, something like a hub and
spokes. A renewable energy grid would
have to distribute electricity produced by numerous, smaller, widely dispersed
facilities (wind and/or solar). These
produce power intermittently, taking naps when the winds go calm, or the
sunbeams stop — sometimes for extended periods.
Meanwhile, the end-user demand for electricity constantly rises
and falls throughout the day. Today’s power
generation infrastructure is carefully designed to react to the frequent ups
and downs of demand, by quickly delivering less or more electricity into the
grid. If this was not the case, life
would have many more technological headaches.
On the other hand, a wind turbine farm pays no attention whatsoever
to end-user demand. More wind, more
power. No wind, no power. The same is true for solar panel arrays, and
the variable inflow of sunbeams. For these
systems to work, large scale battery infrastructure is needed to effectively store
surplus energy when generation exceeds demand, and then later release stored
energy whenever demand exceeds generation.
In northern regions, demand zooms higher when winter moves in, so the
battery backup buffer would ideally need to store maybe four weeks of
electricity — a huge challenge. Nobody
knows if this is even possible under real world conditions.
There are two forms of electricity, AC and DC. The grid can only carry AC power. When you plug a gizmo into a wall receptacle,
it receives AC. AC cannot be stored —
once it is fed into the grid, it will either be used or lost. Surplus AC can be converted to DC, which can
be stored in a backup buffer battery, for later use. When demand rises, DC in the battery can be
converted to AC, and fed back into the grid.
Your cell phone and flashlight have batteries, because they run on DC. Solar panels and wind turbines produce DC,
which can be stored in batteries.
And now, the plot thickens.
Lithium-ion batteries provide the most efficient storage. To power 1.39 billion EVs, an estimated 282.6
million tons of batteries would be needed. Plus, vastly more battery infrastructure would
be needed to provide the storage buffer for the grid — an additional 2.5 billion tons! So, to enable both EVs and grid buffer
storage, an estimated 2.78 billion tons of batteries would be needed. “This far exceeds global reserves of nickel,
cobalt, lithium, and graphite.” Without
adequate storage buffers, “the wind and solar power generation may not be able
to be scaled up to the proposed global scope.”
Indeed, the geologists wondered if there are adequate mineral
resources to make batteries for just the 1.39 billion EVs. They wrote, “Preliminary calculations show
that global reserves, let alone global production, may not be enough to
resource the quantity of batteries required.”
Oh, and those 1.39 billion EV batteries would have a useful working life
of just of 8 to 10 years. And the wind
turbines and solar panels also have limited lifespans, 20 to 30 years or
so. Everything will need periodic
replacement, from now to eternity. For
this reason, Alice Friedemann suggests that “renewable” should more accurately
be referred to as “rebuildable.” No free
lunch.
Mineral resources are neither infinite, easily available, nor
cheap. The massive transition to
renewables looks more like a frantic short term plastic bandage, rather than an
effective, well planned permanent cure. The
geologists conclude that a transition to renewable energy seems to be seriously
hobbled by the limited availability of nonrenewable minerals.
The recipe for lithium-ion batteries requires five essential
minerals: copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and graphite. Are there adequate reserves of these minerals
to manufacture all those batteries? No,
not even close. EV transport would need 1.39
billion batteries. “In theory, there are
enough global reserves of copper if they were exclusively used just to produce
lithium-ion batteries for just one generation of vehicles.” Reserves of the other four minerals are not
adequate to make all of those EV batteries.
See the chart on page six of the report’s summary. [LINK]
So, we’ve looked at transport and electricity generation, and
their theoretical renewable options. The
third focus of the Finnish report was industrial manufacturing. What are the theoretical options for running
industrial systems on renewable energy? The
geologists can’t think of any. See the
chart on page two of the report’s summary.
Simon Michaux authored the Finnish report. He wrote, “In conclusion, this report
suggests that replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas, and
coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines,
will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor
resources to do this by the current target set by the world’s most influential
nations. What may be required,
therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of
all kinds. This implies a very different
social contract and a radically different system of governance to what is in
place today. Inevitably, this leads to
the conclusion that the existing renewable energy sectors and the EV technology
systems are merely steppingstones to something else, rather than the final
solution. It is recommended that some
thought be given to this and what that something else might be.”
Michaux, Simon P., “Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required
of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil
Fuels,” Geological Survey of Finland, August 20, 2021.
I did not entirely read the 1,000 page report [LINK]. I did carefully read the fairly
understandable eight page summary of the report [LINK].
