Yes, we have everything we need to transition off fossil fuels now

The vast majority of our CO2 problems come from pushing cars and making electricity from coal and gas. Only 20% of the energy expenditure in a combustion vehicle goes into moving it – the rest of the energy goes out the exhaust pipe, as 35% does in electricity generation. Petroleum, coal, and natural gas total 80.2 quads of energy consumption, which produce almost all of the CO2 we emit every year.

Global Energy Transformation: A Roadmap to 2050 and Electrification with Renewables from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) are among a slew of other studies, like these 56 compiled by Stanford University, that show a clearly achievable and affordable path to making the dramatic emissions cuts needed to prevent climate catastrophe. Close coal. Ramp up renewables. Electrify everything. Increase efficiency.

So why aren’t we racing down this path to a cleaner, safer future? In his recent book, The New Climate War, top climate scientist Michael Mann persuasively blames the powerful campaigns of denial, deception, distraction, and delay mounted by the fossil fuel industries and their supporters

Excerpt from Lloyd Alter on Treehugger, re: Saul Griffith…

The first thing that grabs attention every year is how much of this energy consumption is “rejected energy.” That’s what is wasted as heat going up the chimney or out the exhaust pipe; they assume 65% efficiency in electricity generation and only 20% in transportation.

Most of that orange electricity is going into residential and commercial buildings, and these days, that’s mostly cooling. So reducing demand by making buildings more efficient can reduce the demand side, but as Saul Griffith has pointed out, there is no rejected energy from solar, hydro, and wind power, there is no chimney. That means you need a lot fewer quads; eliminating the rejected energy from electricity production alone reduces overall energy consumption by a quarter.

The other big source of rejected energy is transportation: Over 20% of the total energy use is going out the tailpipe because cars are such inefficient converters of heat into motion. In 2020 the amount of electricity going into transportation is an almost invisibly tiny 0.02 quads, but look at the total amount of energy actually being used in cars; it’s only 5.09 quads, all the rest is wasted and is turned into heat and carbon dioxide. Electric vehicles are almost 90% efficient, so they need in total about a quarter of the energy needed to move cars.

Of course, we can blow a lot of that if we just change over to Ford F-150 Lightnings instead of promoting efficient electric vehicles and alternates such as bikes or e-bikes, When you look at the total energy flows, reducing consumption does matter.

In 2020 the industrial sector was bigger than transportation, at 25.3 quads. As shown by this older chart that probably still represents the approximate distribution, most of that is going into aluminum, steel, concrete, and glass, most of which is going into cars, roads, and buildings. All of which could be reduced through design choices and regulation.

The most obvious and disturbing number on the chart is the total of petroleum, coal, and natural gas, totaling 80.2 quads of energy consumption, which produce almost all of the CO2 we emit every year. As the most recent CO2 emissions chart shows, the vast majority of our CO2 problems come from pushing cars and making electricity from coal and gas. There are other greenhouse gases we have to worry about like methane, but they are not tracked here:

Looking back to 2014, you can see how far we have come. Solar and wind have grown tremendously, Coal is down by almost half, and overall consumption in 2019 had not grown that much in five years. Some things are going in the right direction. But every chart of every year tells the same story, the big honking green bar at the bottom.

Our biggest problems are fossil fuel-powered cars, cars, and cars. They are grossly inefficient, and our world is designed around them. When we electrify them, the total energy going to them is only a quarter of what it is now.

One could spend hours looking at these charts. See a selection here going back to 1950 and you can watch the U.S. develop as sprawl happens, as air conditioning allows the growth of the sunbelt, as the oil crunch of the 70s hits, as the nuclear industry stagnates. There is so much history here, but you can also read the future, and it is one without oil. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/why-bill-gates-and-john-kerry-are-wrong-about-climate-change/

Global Energy Transformation: A Roadmap to 2050 and Electrification with Renewables from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). These and a slew of other studies, like these 56 compiled by Stanford University, show a clearly achievable and affordable three-step path to making the dramatic emissions cuts needed to prevent climate catastrophe. The first step: electrify everything possible.

That means roads crawling with Teslas, Chevy Bolts (like mine), and their progeny; heat pumps and induction stoves in homes; electric furnaces in industry; and even electric ships and airplanes. Since using electricity is so much more efficient than burning fossil fuels, extensive electrification actually cuts total energy demand and energy costs—even at today’s prices for renewable energy. (And let’s not forget that the powertrain in an electric vehicle is light years more efficient than the one in the internal combustion engine of a gasoline-powered car; as little as 12 percent of the energy in the fuel is actually used to make a gasoline car move, while electric cars are 77 percent efficient or more—and electric powertrains have as few as 20 moving parts, while conventional power trains have 2,000.) And since most electrical devices can be quickly ramped up or down to match the electricity supply, and some, like plugged-in electric vehicles, can even pump electrons back into the grid, widespread electrification touches off a virtuous cycle. By making it easier to incorporate the variable output from wind turbines and solar arrays, it smooths the implementation of the second key step—generating all the electricity we need from renewables. The third step then is a serious expansion of energy efficiency measures like home weatherization to reduce overall energy consumption even further.

So why aren’t we racing down this path to a cleaner, safer future? In his recent book, The New Climate War, top climate scientist Michael Mann persuasively blames the powerful campaigns of denial, deception, distraction, and delay mounted by the fossil fuel industries and their supporters