{"id":64682,"date":"2023-01-10T11:06:11","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T16:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64682"},"modified":"2023-01-10T11:08:18","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T16:08:18","slug":"64682","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64682","title":{"rendered":"Renewables Are Slowly Approaching Diminishing Returns"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Renewables Are Slowly Approaching Diminishing Returns<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Photo by\u00a0Ryan Grice<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once a source of hope for maintaining our modern lifestyle, renewables are close to hit diminishing returns (i.e.: providing less and less benefit to society with every addition of a new solar panel or wind turbine). For the record: fossil fuels have long passed the same point, where\u00a0<\/em>drilling<\/em><\/mark>\u00a0another well or opening a new mine eats up exponentially more resources and energy than the previous one \u2014 not to mention kicking CO2 levels even higher. The question is: can we continue high tech civilization now based on renewables, or are we about to hit the same limitations as with every other technology we have used in the past?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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P<\/span>roviding data to substantiate claims of hitting diminishing returns is not easy. It goes well beyond \u201csimple\u201d return on investment calculations \u2014 it takes a holistic approach, a real cradle to grave assessment if you like. So far I haven\u2019t came across such study (Simon Michaux\u2019s work<\/a>\u00a0comes closest), so if you are an independent researcher or student looking for a PhD topic, feel free to elaborate on the subject\u2014 just please let me know what you have found.<\/p>\n

Until then \u2014 as usual \u2014 treat the following as thought experiment, and see if it makes sense to you. As always, use your critical thinking skills and don\u2019t take anything I (let alone uneducated people in the mainstream media) say at face value. With that aside let\u2019s see what may be the ominous signs of society hitting diminishing returns when it comes to deploying \u2018renewables\u2019\u00a0at scale<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n

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Renewables Are Slowly Approaching Diminishing Returns Photo by\u00a0Ryan Grice\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash Once a source of hope for maintaining our modern lifestyle, renewables are close to hit diminishing returns (i.e.: providing less and less benefit to society with every addition of a new solar panel or wind turbine). For the record: fossil fuels have long passed the same […]<\/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":[2,3,4,7],"tags":[209,265,328,15442,32578],"class_list":["post-64682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-diminishing-returns","tag-energy-crisis","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-renewables","tag-the-honest-sorcerer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64682","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=64682"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64684,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64682\/revisions\/64684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}