With more then 2.2 million readers a day, the Financial Times is the newspaper of record for economists, business leaders, and government policy makers worldwide. Think Progress claims FT,
as it is known to its readers, is the “most important business read”
and “the most credible publication in reporting financial and economic
issues” for global professional investors, business leaders, and policy
makers according to surveys.
On May 18, its lead story was entitled: The Big Green Bang: How Renewable Energy Became Unstoppable.
It begins with a question, one that should leave fossil fuel industry
leaders feeling glum — “Is the 21st century the last one for fossil
fuels?” Before we start rejoicing, keep in mind there are still 83 years
left to go in this century and the fossil fuel industry intends to
extract and sell every molecule of fossil fuels it can find before the
end times for oil, natural gas, and coal arrive. By the time 2101 gets
here, the earth may have been unalterably changed to the point where
human existence as we know it is no longer possible.
Bill McKibben, in his insightful book, Oil And Honey,
makes the case clearly. The environment can withstand perhaps another
565 gigatons of carbon emissions before the environment tips over into
unsustainability. After that, most of the species presently alive will
simply disappear, the oceans will rise by an average of 12 feet, and
global temperatures will increase to the point where traditional
agriculture becomes impossible. Our children’s children may not roast to
death but they very well might die of starvation.
McKibben then drops the other shoe. The
world’s fossil fuel companies have reserves which, if consumed, will
release 2,795 gigatons of carbon emissions into the world’s already
overloaded ecosystem — five times more than the environment can possibly
absorb. If the fossil fuel companies dropped nuclear bombs on society,
they would be vilified as monsters. But 2,795 gigatons worth of carbon
may be worse than a nuclear attack. Radiation begins to abate after a
few hundred years. It may be a million years of more the earth is able
to recover from the fossil fuel bomb the Koch Brothers and their ilk
have in mind.
The value of all those reserves is
estimated at $27 trillion. That’s how much ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch
Shell, the Koch Brothers, and the rest of the climate destroyers stand
to lose if they are unable to tap and commercialize all assets they
control. $27 trillion can buy a lot of politicians and captive think
tanks who get paid big bucks to make it seem as though slowly killing
ourselves is a great idea.
The Financial Times tells the
story of Torotrak, a British company that has been working for 6 years
on a high-tech turbocharger that will help make internal combustion
engines more efficient in order to meet increasingly rigorous emissions
standards. It was in talks with such global automakers as Volkswagen,
General Motors, and Toyota about using its device in their cars until
recently. Then suddenly, the conversations came to an abrupt halt.
Adam Robson, head of Torotrak, tells the Financial Times the
companies all started telling him the same thing — “We think the shift
to electric vehicles is accelerating and we have only limited R&D
money to invest and we are going to put all of it into the electric car
revolution.” Robson says, “This is a colossal structural shift and it’s
come at a pace that has never occurred in people’s careers before in
this industry.”
Electric cars are only part of the
story. Renewable energy is the biggest piece of the puzzle. The key to
renewable energy becoming dominant is storage systems that can capture
electricity and save it for use later when the sun sets or the wind
stops blowing. Right now, battery storage seems to be the method of
choice for this time-shifting technology. Although still relatively
expensive, battery prices are falling rapidly. They are down 50% in the
past three years and expected to fall another 30% by 2021.
Everyone knows about the fantabulous Tesla Gigafactory going up in the desert outside Reno, Nevada, but the Financial Times points out there are 14 large battery factories in operation or under construction worldwide — 9 of them in China.
Other types of storage systems are also actively under development. Concentrated solar
uses the sun’s energy to create molten salt or silicon. That heat can
later be recaptured to create steam for conventional generators. Pumped hydro
storage has been around a long time and is still a viable way of
capturing electricity now for use later. There is even one company that
wants to build a railroad to nowhere
in the Nevada desert. It would use electricity to haul a train loaded
with cement blocks up a mountain. Later, the train would descend, using a
form of regenerative braking to create electricity on its way back
downhill.
Pilita Clark, the author of the Financial Times
story, has a cautionary tale for people in the United States.
“Investors say important trends like this are obscured in countries
where the existence of climate change is still so widely contested that
the scale of the energy transition is under-estimated.” Clark ends by
quoting Eddie O’Connor, CEO of Mainstream Renewable Power, an Irish wind
farm developer. His company has just established record low prices for
electricity in Chile. It easily beat providers of fossil fuel power,
even though all bids had to guarantee meeting electricity demand 24
hours a day. “Fossil fuels have lost,” O’Connor says. “The rest of the
world just doesn’t know it yet.”
Bill Gates has an interesting
observation on change. He says, “We always overestimate the change that
will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will
occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”
Perhaps he was thinking of Charles and David Koch and their greedy oil
business buddies when he said that. Certainly fossil fuels are not going
away in the next 2 years. But 10 years from now?
It would be the sweetest of victories if
the capitalist system that turned these pirates into multi-billionaires
turned on them and rendered them penniless by reducing the value of all
those lovely fossil fuel reserves to zero. The mythical unseen hand of
free market economics giveth and it taketh away. Touché!
Source: Think Progress
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/19/renewable-energy-unstoppable-declares-financial-times/
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