Coal, Oil, LNG, etc?
Like, not just 'we can live without it'
but could we perform as we do now with it, without it? with all that means?
Like, could we, if we invested in renewables, in a timespan of 5-10 years (forget beaurucraty or unnesecary stuff, only actual things), could we perform (the energy needs And the safety (like, guarantee of it) like we do today?
One thing I’ve heard is that fossil fuel is extremely dense
Do we still actually need natural energy?
byu/This-Wear-8423 inenergy
Posted by This-Wear-8423
5 Comments
We can easily do 80% of it, reducing the rate we are damaging things. And while on the way we would be working out the last 20%.
The good news is that if we keep following the growth curves for about 6 years or so, we are already on track.
Yes, we aren’t ready to go completely fossil free. Energy density is a thing, and continuity – most forms of renewables aren’t capable of continuous energy generation, and that requires significant battery construction, which is expensive and one of the biggest hurdles in renewables. And also an updated smart infrastructure to get the energy where we need it when we need it.
That being said, we should be producing the heck out of renewables especially as their cost goes down, and in the future we almost certainly will be able to build things like skyscrapers where the window panes function both as windows and energy receptors for solar.
Most combustion activity can plausibly be electrified, and then you can get electricity from non-combustion sources.
There’s a few combustive usages that are actually still difficult (off the top of my head, large aircraft, the most intense industrial heat processes). Some of that may end up being replaced by non-fossil derived combustion instead. However, for most regular combustion/heat, the electrical alternative exists now, and will just take time/money/will to substitute.
There’s also some non-combustive feedstock uses of fossil fuels that still require some work, primary steel production, chemical production, cement. These have alternatives in the works, but mostly aren’t fully there yet AFAIK.
But the hard cases are fiddling at the margins, and if we get down to just worrying about those things we’ve largely solved the problem. The vast majority of fossil fuel use is relatively easy to electrify given enough capital and some time.
We can go all renewables, but your timeline is much too short. Even 20 years would be an impressive achievement.
Can’t make the plastic of even pcb boards with out it