Straight Talk on An Energy Transition That's Way Far from What It Claims to Be

A new Fraser Institute report with plenty of blunt talk on the supposed energy transition is out by Vaclav Smil. It is titled “Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050 Zero Carbon Is a Highly Unlikely Outcoma.” The author is Vaclav Smil, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. I found it very enlightening precisely becaus it's so candid.

Let me offer a few paragraphs to illustrate what I mean:

Since the world began to focus on the need to end the combustion of fossil fuels, we have not made the slightest progress in the goal of absolute global decarbonization: emission declines in many affluent countries were far smaller than the increased consumption of coal and hydrocarbons in the rest of the world, a trend that has also reflected the continuing deindustrialization in Europe and North America and the rising shares of carbon-intensive industrial production originating in Asia. As a result, by 2023 the absolute reliance on fossil carbon rose by 54 percent worldwide since the Kyoto commitment.

Moreover, a significant part of emission declines in many affluent countries has been due to their deindustrialization, to transferring some of their carbon-intensive industries abroad, above all to China…

Given the fact that we have yet to reach the global carbon emission peak (or a plateau) and considering the necessarily gradual progress of several key technical solutions for decarbonization (from large-scale electricity storage to mass-scale hydrogen use), we cannot expect the world economy to become carbon-free by 2050. The goal may be desirable, but it remains unrealistic…

Wishful thinking or claiming otherwise should not be used or defended by saying that doing so represents “aspirational” goals. Responsible analyses must acknowledge existing energy, material, engineering, managerial, economic, and political realities…

More and more people are recognizing these realities, and fewer are swayed by the incessant stream of miraculously downward-bending decarbonization scenarios so dear to demand modelers.

And, then there is Figure 5 from the report titled “Global Dependence on Fossil Fuels Has Continued to Rise in the Twenty-first Century,” which is found below:

This is a great report. It is very balanced but brutal in terms of the realities that need to be addressed by anyone serious about the subject. And, those realities are going to bend toward more demand for energy than any amount of rtenerwables could ever provide. Artificial Intelligence alone is going to explode energy demand. Crypto currency is also likely to do so because our ruling class of power-hungry globalist elites are doing everything they can to destroy the dollar and alternatives free of government control and manipulation will bre sought out on an ever larger scale.

Again, check out the full report here. You won't be disappointed in the straight talk.

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