{"id":20903,"date":"2016-06-04T13:57:35","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T18:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20903"},"modified":"2016-06-04T13:57:35","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T18:57:35","slug":"our-renewable-future-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20903","title":{"rendered":"Our Renewable Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/ourrenewablefuture.org\/#the-book\"><span class=\"dropcap\">Our Renewable Future<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<p><strong><span class=\"dropcap\">Introduction<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span>he next few decades will see a profound and all-encompassing energy transformation throughout the world. Whereas society now derives the great majority of its energy from fossil fuels, by the end of the century we will depend primarily on renewable sources like solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal power.<\/p>\n<p>Two irresistible forces will drive this historic transition.<\/p>\n<p>The first is the necessity of avoiding catastrophic climate change. In December 2015, 196 nations unanimously agreed to limit global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures.<a href=\"http:\/\/ourrenewablefuture.org\/references\/#_ftnI.1\" name=\"_ftnrefI.1\">[1]<\/a>\u00a0While some of this reduction could technically be achieved by carbon capture and storage from coal power plants, carbon sequestration in soils and forests, and other \u201cnegative emissions\u201d technologies and efforts, the great majority of it will require dramatic cuts in fossil fuel consumption.<\/p>\n<p>The second force driving a post-carbon energy shift is the ongoing depletion of the world\u2019s oil, coal, and natural gas resources. Even if we do nothing to avoid climate change, our current energy regime remains unsustainable. Though Earth\u2019s crust still holds enormous quantities of fossil fuels, economically useful portions of this resource base are much smaller, and the fossil fuel industry has typically targeted the highest-quality, easiest-to-access resources first.<\/p>\n<p>All fossil fuel producers face the problem of declining resource quality, but the problem is most apparent in the petroleum sector. During the decade from 2005 to 2015, the oil industry\u2019s costs of production rose by over 10 percent per year because the world\u2019s cheap, conventional oil reserves\u2014the \u201clow-hanging fruit\u201d\u2014are now dwindling (fig. I.1). While new extraction technologies make lower-quality resources accessible (like tar sands and tight oil from fracking), these technologies require higher levels of investment and usually entail heightened environmental risks.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our Renewable Future Introduction The next few decades will see a profound and all-encompassing energy transformation throughout the world. Whereas society now derives the great majority of its energy from fossil fuels, by the end of the century we will depend primarily on renewable sources like solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal power. Two irresistible forces [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13994,639,1081],"class_list":["post-20903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-our-renewable-future","tag-post-carbon-institute","tag-richard-heinberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20904,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20903\/revisions\/20904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}