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I can recommend Smil's books quite easily. There are a lot of renewable/green energy advocates that don't like him and try to paint him in a bad light. The re

I can recommend Smil's books quite easily. There are a lot of renewable/green energy advocates that don't like him and try to paint him in a bad light. The reason mainly is that Smil takes a look at energy transitions and tells you: it's hard. He just analyzes in a very methodical way and paints the picture that is just grim because of the numbers and momentous challenge. Smil himself is very much pro green energy, pro rational energy use and all the jazz. He just is not that optimistic that this is going to be easy or even see how the global warming problem is solvable. It's a bit sad that some green energy advocates are missing the whole point of Smil and attack him personally even tho he is in fact one of the most useful allies. If you want to have his views/analysis in an hour long youtube video instead of the (well worthy of a read) stack of books he has written then there is this lecture [0]. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szikg74kgnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szikg74kgnM Edit: I have really crappy internet so I believe I actually meant this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJxmlNyu4sE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJxmlNyu4sE

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Smil is effectively a degrowther because he doesn't believe renewables, EVs etc. will work well enough. Quote: > Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’ Which is at least logically consistent, but bad timing as most of his boosters are currently trying to pivot from "climate change isn't real" to "bloody hippies are holding back rapid rollout of renewables with their environmental regulations" and hoping no one notices the contradiction and their history of fossil fuel apologism.
- ido 3y ago
  I don’t care if they want to improve their PR retroactively if the result is rapid deployment of renewable. “Who was right all along” doesn’t matter as what actually gets done.
photochemsyn 3y ago
I can't. Smil's claims are just poorly informed, characterized by a limited understanding of fundamentals, and with a clear bias towards existing systems. Might as well be a kerosene lamp enthusiast in the era of electricity and incandescent bulbs. It's entirely possible to run human civilization at its current level of complexity without fossil fuels or uranium, entirely using the sun's energy output and the planet's energy output in the form of solar, wind, geothermal and storage. Smil is entirely opposed to this notion, likely because the people who've promoted him don't want to see the value of their fossil fuel and uranium investments drop to zero. Wanna buy a kerosene lamp, anyone?
- jnsaff2 3y ago
  This is what I was talking about. Rants like this who have switched off mid sentence somewhere. He does not say that anything about staying on fossils. He does not say anything about there not being enough green resources. He just quantifies what it would take and the result is that we need to build like a reactor per week or massive amounts of PV/wind/etc. Much more and much quicker than we do.
schimmy_changa 3y ago
I've read a few of his books and can also recommend them, with a caveat: Smil asserts confidently that something is infeasible or impossible, yet what he says is impossible _has since come to pass_. The main example here is the cost of solar and wind - in his earlier books he assumes that the transition to renewables must go slower than it has, simply because solar and wind couldn't possibly be cost competitive with fossil fuels. (Yes, it's not cheaper in many circumstances, but I'm talking about cost-competitive against coal unsubsidized, for instance, something he would not have predicted would happen in the mid 2010s) He's a fantastic historian of energy, but falls into one of Clarke's laws: _When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong_ Yes, the energy transition is very hard and will take longer than many boosters want, and the history suggests this, but he also doesn't realize that history can also be changed by _learning from_ that history.
- aksss 3y ago
  I don’t seem to recall Smil saying things are impossible, just that there’s a predictable rate of improvement, and it would take a miracle to improve that rate by the needed orders of magnitude to achieve the goals in the timeframes set out by the more ambitious advocates. He doesn’t even say miracles are impossible, just that he wouldn’t bet on them happening. He throws cold water by reminding us that we’re still moving into fossil fuels globally, not reducing.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  I'm in the camp that says the energy transition is already well underway and will be completed even without major breakthroughs in technology. Those are of course helpful but we can get there with what we have. It's not that hard. It's just a lot of work and organizing. But those are non technical challenges. And they are incentivized by huge economical benefits. Even though we don't need them, there is actually an enormous amount of technical improvements in the research pipeline of course. Major breakthroughs in material science, energy efficiency, energy density, cost, etc. Failing to take that into account is what makes many predictions wrong. Some of that stuff is very close to market readiness. E.g, 500 wh/kg batteries are coming to market this year. Better ones might follow a few years later. That stuff will revolutionize aviation and and a few other things. Also, several Chinese cars are now shipping with sodium ion batteries (no lithium, no cobalt, or other precious metals). So, we now have a viable path to electrification that isn't bottle-necked on relatively expensive/rare metals. Most of the progress in the energy transition is cost driven. Green technology is achieving a lot of things but the most important one is that it makes things that used to be really expensive, really cheap. And this is not over yet. There are still some orders of magnitude cost improvements coming our way. Any predictions assuming this isn't happening are basically off by orders of magnitude as well. They overestimate cost. They underestimate effect. Most importantly they under estimate the levels of investment that are unlocked by this. Which is speeding all this up. Historians tend to be weak on their math and economic skills. That's why this one got his assumptions wrong. The rest is still informative but basically an intellectual sand castle. He's in good company of course. Lots of people got their predictions wrong based on assumptions they were making that were simply wrong. There's still a lot of that going on. Some of it is intentional even. People in the fossil fuel industry for example have been downplaying a lot of this stuff because they need to delay the moment that they go out of business. There is a lot of lobbying related to expected timelines and predictions. The stakes are really high. But what it boils down to is that a lot of fossil fuel based energy generation is effectively obsolete right now.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

Smil is effectively a degrowther because he doesn't believe renewables, EVs etc. will work well enough. Quote: > Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’ Which is at least logically consistent, but bad timing as most of his boosters are currently trying to pivot from "climate change isn't real" to "bloody hippies are holding back rapid rollout of renewables with their environmental regulations" and hoping no one notices the contradiction and their history of fossil fuel apologism.

ido 3y ago
I don’t care if they want to improve their PR retroactively if the result is rapid deployment of renewable. “Who was right all along” doesn’t matter as what actually gets done.

photochemsyn 3y ago

I can't. Smil's claims are just poorly informed, characterized by a limited understanding of fundamentals, and with a clear bias towards existing systems. Might as well be a kerosene lamp enthusiast in the era of electricity and incandescent bulbs. It's entirely possible to run human civilization at its current level of complexity without fossil fuels or uranium, entirely using the sun's energy output and the planet's energy output in the form of solar, wind, geothermal and storage. Smil is entirely opposed to this notion, likely because the people who've promoted him don't want to see the value of their fossil fuel and uranium investments drop to zero. Wanna buy a kerosene lamp, anyone?

jnsaff2 3y ago
This is what I was talking about. Rants like this who have switched off mid sentence somewhere. He does not say that anything about staying on fossils. He does not say anything about there not being enough green resources. He just quantifies what it would take and the result is that we need to build like a reactor per week or massive amounts of PV/wind/etc. Much more and much quicker than we do.

schimmy_changa 3y ago

I've read a few of his books and can also recommend them, with a caveat: Smil asserts confidently that something is infeasible or impossible, yet what he says is impossible _has since come to pass_. The main example here is the cost of solar and wind - in his earlier books he assumes that the transition to renewables must go slower than it has, simply because solar and wind couldn't possibly be cost competitive with fossil fuels. (Yes, it's not cheaper in many circumstances, but I'm talking about cost-competitive against coal unsubsidized, for instance, something he would not have predicted would happen in the mid 2010s) He's a fantastic historian of energy, but falls into one of Clarke's laws: _When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong_ Yes, the energy transition is very hard and will take longer than many boosters want, and the history suggests this, but he also doesn't realize that history can also be changed by _learning from_ that history.

aksss 3y ago
I don’t seem to recall Smil saying things are impossible, just that there’s a predictable rate of improvement, and it would take a miracle to improve that rate by the needed orders of magnitude to achieve the goals in the timeframes set out by the more ambitious advocates. He doesn’t even say miracles are impossible, just that he wouldn’t bet on them happening. He throws cold water by reminding us that we’re still moving into fossil fuels globally, not reducing.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
I'm in the camp that says the energy transition is already well underway and will be completed even without major breakthroughs in technology. Those are of course helpful but we can get there with what we have. It's not that hard. It's just a lot of work and organizing. But those are non technical challenges. And they are incentivized by huge economical benefits. Even though we don't need them, there is actually an enormous amount of technical improvements in the research pipeline of course. Major breakthroughs in material science, energy efficiency, energy density, cost, etc. Failing to take that into account is what makes many predictions wrong. Some of that stuff is very close to market readiness. E.g, 500 wh/kg batteries are coming to market this year. Better ones might follow a few years later. That stuff will revolutionize aviation and and a few other things. Also, several Chinese cars are now shipping with sodium ion batteries (no lithium, no cobalt, or other precious metals). So, we now have a viable path to electrification that isn't bottle-necked on relatively expensive/rare metals. Most of the progress in the energy transition is cost driven. Green technology is achieving a lot of things but the most important one is that it makes things that used to be really expensive, really cheap. And this is not over yet. There are still some orders of magnitude cost improvements coming our way. Any predictions assuming this isn't happening are basically off by orders of magnitude as well. They overestimate cost. They underestimate effect. Most importantly they under estimate the levels of investment that are unlocked by this. Which is speeding all this up. Historians tend to be weak on their math and economic skills. That's why this one got his assumptions wrong. The rest is still informative but basically an intellectual sand castle. He's in good company of course. Lots of people got their predictions wrong based on assumptions they were making that were simply wrong. There's still a lot of that going on. Some of it is intentional even. People in the fossil fuel industry for example have been downplaying a lot of this stuff because they need to delay the moment that they go out of business. There is a lot of lobbying related to expected timelines and predictions. The stakes are really high. But what it boils down to is that a lot of fossil fuel based energy generation is effectively obsolete right now.