{"id":22843,"date":"2017-02-19T19:12:54","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T00:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22843"},"modified":"2017-02-19T19:13:12","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T00:13:12","slug":"22843","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22843","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cWind and Solar Will Save Us\u201d Delusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201cWind and Solar Will Save Us\u201d\u00a0Delusion<\/a><\/h3>\n
The \u201cWind and Solar Will Save Us\u201d story is based on a long list of misunderstandings and apples to oranges comparisons. Somehow, people seem to believe that our economy of 7.5 billion people can get along with a very short list of energy supplies. This short list will not include fossil fuels. Some would exclude nuclear, as well. Without these energy types, we find ourselves with a short list of types of energy \u2014 what BP calls Hydroelectric, Geobiomass (geothermal, wood, wood waste, and other miscellaneous types; also liquid fuels from plants), Wind, and Solar.<\/div>\n
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Unfortunately, a transition to such a short list of fuels can\u2019t really work. These are a few of the problems we encounter:<\/p>\n

[1] Wind and solar are making extremely slow progress in helping the world move away from fossil fuel dependence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2015, fossil fuels accounted for 86% of the world\u2019s energy consumption, and nuclear added another 4%, based on data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Thus, the world\u2019s \u201cpreferred fuels\u201d made up only 10% of the total. Wind and solar together accounted for a little less than 2% of world energy consumption.<\/p>\n

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\"Figure<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 1. World energy consumption based on data from BP 2016 Statistical Review of World Energy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Our progress in getting away from fossil fuels has not been very fast, either. Going back to 1985, fossil fuels made up 89% of the total, and wind and solar were both insignificant. As indicated above, fossil fuels today comprise 86% of total energy consumption. Thus, in 30 years, we have managed to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 3% (=89% \u2013 86%). Growth in wind and solar contributed 2% of this 3% reduction. At the rate of a 3% reduction every 30 years (or 1% reduction every ten years), it will take 860 years, or until the year 2877 to completely eliminate the use of fossil fuels. And the \u201cimprovement\u201d made to date was made with huge subsidies for wind and solar.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cWind and Solar Will Save Us\u201d\u00a0Delusion The \u201cWind and Solar Will Save Us\u201d story is based on a long list of misunderstandings and apples to oranges comparisons. Somehow, people seem to believe that our economy of 7.5 billion people can get along with a very short list of energy supplies. This short list will […]<\/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":[14831,9415,1233,1232,1859,2654],"class_list":["post-22843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-alternative-power","tag-delusion","tag-gail-tverberg","tag-our-finite-world","tag-solar-power","tag-wind-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22843","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=22843"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22845,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22843\/revisions\/22845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}