Some people actually saw this coming. The author fell in the trap of assuming nothing would change or improve. Which is interesting as a thought experiment but

Some people actually saw this coming. The author fell in the trap of assuming nothing would change or improve. Which is interesting as a thought experiment but otherwise a bit flawed for making any kind of projections. There's a reason we have had so much progress in the last fifteen years: fifteen years ago, investments in this area had been ramping up for a while already. Those investors were making calculated bets on things improving massively. And they weren't wrong. There are some good reasons to continue to be optimistic about the next 27 years (until 2050). That's almost twice the amount of time since the original article from 2008. I expect grid storage is going to be massively successful as prices drop. There are a lot of different solutions emerging currently; many of which are not dependent on any scarce resources. Then learning effects applied to solar and wind should result in more cost reductions. Finally, industrial use of energy is likely to start changing as well. Industrial heating is a big topic with lots of possible solutions.