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> We know that the continued exponential growth of solar means that fossil fuels won’t be absolutely necessary for the economy in 10-15 years. Where did you ge

> We know that the continued exponential growth of solar means that fossil fuels won’t be absolutely necessary for the economy in 10-15 years. Where did you get that from ? Renewable are stacked on top of fossil, we use as much (more even) fossil fuel than ever before, it never went down: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix Germany is the prime example of this green washing: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig1-installed-net-electricity-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2024.png https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

ben_w 2y ago
If you accept that PV will continue to grow exponentially, the historical trend is ~1000x growth over the last 21 years, or 10x every 7 years. PV is about 10% of global electricity demand and about 1% of all-forms global energy demand today; 7 years (even without wind) and its going to be dominant over electrical generation, 14 and there's enough electricity to electrify everything else we do, too. If you accept that the exponential growth will continue. It's not guaranteed.
- lm28469 2y ago
  France is 70% nuclear and the average co2 per capita still is ~10 tonnes per year... to get it to a sustainable level I think the target is under 3 tonnes according to the Paris agreement. I think a lot of posters in the thread run a very simplified version of the world in their mind
  - ben_w 2y ago
    3 tons per capita per year, globally, is 24 gigatons — that would only be a 30% or so reduction from the status quo. We need a 99.9% reduction to be long-term sustainable; that's 4375 grams of CO2 per person per year. If there was no carbon capture, it would be at the level of "everything everywhere except for North Korea" or "everything in every country except for land-use changes to grasslands" Thinking of simplification, France is ~70% nuclear electricity, which I emphasise because I'd already noted a roughly 10x gap between worldwide electrical and worldwide all-forms power.
dr_dshiv 2y ago
Great ref, from Germany’s energy mix! Here’s an S-curve model I made based on two maximum carrying capacities for solar; the lower bound is the current amount of farmland devoted to ethanol while the upper bound is 1% of the earth’s surface. Data models based on historical growth in solar [1]. I show the current total electricity usage and the total energy usage. These are growing slowly worldwide, around 2%. https://claude.site/artifacts/eb3c4763-3b70-458b-8e70-6b837014b438 https://claude.site/artifacts/eb3c4763-3b70-458b-8e70-6b8370... We are deep into the massive exponential growth of solar. Can we keep it up? [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...
illiac786 2y ago
I might be misreading the cleanenergywire.org diagram but it shows that oil consumption went down, coal as well. Or did you mean that this diagram _is_ the greenwashing? If so, why?

ben_w 2y ago

If you accept that PV will continue to grow exponentially, the historical trend is ~1000x growth over the last 21 years, or 10x every 7 years. PV is about 10% of global electricity demand and about 1% of all-forms global energy demand today; 7 years (even without wind) and its going to be dominant over electrical generation, 14 and there's enough electricity to electrify everything else we do, too. If you accept that the exponential growth will continue. It's not guaranteed.

lm28469 2y ago
France is 70% nuclear and the average co2 per capita still is ~10 tonnes per year... to get it to a sustainable level I think the target is under 3 tonnes according to the Paris agreement. I think a lot of posters in the thread run a very simplified version of the world in their mind
- ben_w 2y ago
  3 tons per capita per year, globally, is 24 gigatons — that would only be a 30% or so reduction from the status quo. We need a 99.9% reduction to be long-term sustainable; that's 4375 grams of CO2 per person per year. If there was no carbon capture, it would be at the level of "everything everywhere except for North Korea" or "everything in every country except for land-use changes to grasslands" Thinking of simplification, France is ~70% nuclear electricity, which I emphasise because I'd already noted a roughly 10x gap between worldwide electrical and worldwide all-forms power.

dr_dshiv 2y ago

Great ref, from Germany’s energy mix! Here’s an S-curve model I made based on two maximum carrying capacities for solar; the lower bound is the current amount of farmland devoted to ethanol while the upper bound is 1% of the earth’s surface. Data models based on historical growth in solar [1]. I show the current total electricity usage and the total energy usage. These are growing slowly worldwide, around 2%. https://claude.site/artifacts/eb3c4763-3b70-458b-8e70-6b837014b438 https://claude.site/artifacts/eb3c4763-3b70-458b-8e70-6b8370... We are deep into the massive exponential growth of solar. Can we keep it up? [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...

illiac786 2y ago

I might be misreading the cleanenergywire.org diagram but it shows that oil consumption went down, coal as well. Or did you mean that this diagram _is_ the greenwashing? If so, why?