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Here's a graph of energy consumption by source: https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years Renewable
by TomSwirly 4y ago
Here's a graph of energy consumption by source: https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years
Renewable sources are growing exponentially but carbon emitting sources continue to grow exponentially as well, simply somewhat slower.
It seems wildly, unreasonably optimistic to look at that graph and imagine most of that majority at the bottom suddenly vanishing within ten years.
- ben_w 4y agoTo me, that looks like a sigmoid that has passed its peak. But, assuming it’s an exponential, it doubled between 1975 and 2015 (i.e. 40 years). Here’s some graphs for PV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics PV is doubling every 3 to 3.5 years. 3 doublings of PV at that rate gets us to about 9-10 TW peak. I don’t know the actual average global capacity factor, but I do know the current global electricity usage is only about 3 TW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...