Replacing hydrocarbons: A fultile quest

"[Clean tech] is a perfect example of a 10x exponential process which will wipe fossils fuels of the market in about a decade. " Tony  Seba, Stanford Economist. 

In agreement with the statement are environmentalist across the globe. World organization, politicians, media are setting goal to replace fossil fuels with a new renewable sources.

​Both Paris Climate Agreement and the so called Green New Deal are set in replacing hydrocarbons, such as oil, natural gas and coal, with renewable sources in the energy sector.

​They claim that hydrocarbons are the culprit for climate change that have the devastate effect on the planet. Thus the solution is to go all-in on clean source of energy such as wind and solar as fast as possible, regardless the cost.  

Nevertheless, the decarbonized movement are so optimistic that they ignore fatal weaknesses in renewable sources.  These weaknesses, at best will make the goal unobtainable by the deadline of 2050. At worst, they will cause even more environment impact than that of hydrocarbons. 

It is impossible for renewable energy to take over hydrocarbons by 2050 because of:
(1) unprecedent time frame for the goal,
(2) unsustainable economy model and
​(3) the physics limits.

About myself
Before we continue on, let me tell you something about myself first.

I was a very active member of the green movement. At one point, I was the secretary of the Green Corps at City College of San Francisco. The Green Corps at that time was trying to make people in San Francisco to vote in favor of green policy such as: banning plastic bottle, reduce consumption of non-organic food product, and obviously green energy. 

However, things changed for me when I participated in college debate tournaments/activities. To be success in debate, I had to collect evidences. I especially loved well written, concise, and full of data documents which can use to compare arguments in competition. And many of them documented the failure of the ongoing green policies.  

Despite the accessibility of these documents, I had not encounter anyone bring them up in debate during the seven year of my debate career. I became suspicious of the green movement, and eventually decided against it after seeing how bad their consequences were.

Major challenges to renewable energy
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Let's begin the discussion with the quote from the beginning:
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"[Clean tech is] a perfect example of a 10x exponential process which will wipe fossil fuels off the market in about a decade.” -TONY SEBA, STANFORD ECONOMIST

This statement represents what is completely wrong with the decarbonized energy movement. It is false on three reasons. It ignores the very tiny contribution of solar and wind and expect renewable energy to overcome such massive gap in just 10 years. Secondly, it ignores the unrealistic demand in mining industry. And it ignores the physics barrier that governs energy conversion for solar and wind.

Time frame
The percentage of solar and wind has been less than 3 percent for at least half a century, and no where in the future they are expected to fulfil the world energy consumption.
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Meanwhile Hydrocarbons contribute above 80 percent of global energy. Petroleum, natural gas and coal in turn produce 35 billion, 30 billion and 28 billion barrels of oil worth of energy annually. Keep in mind that the global demand for energy has been increasing 50 percent since 2000. 

For wind and solar to take over fossil fuels in twenty to thirty year (not ten years), they will have to increase at least 90-fold,, not just ten-fold in production. There are no such massive increase precedent happened in the past. Hydrocarbons took 50 years just to reach 10 fold increase in production. ​

The decarbonized goal cannot be meet, unless the world completely shut down and destroy all hydrocarbon system so that solar and wind can have above 90% energy supplies. By doing so wind and solar power will increase more than ten-fold in percentage of energy production but it will leaves at least 80 percent world population devastated because that have no access to energy.

Other mean to reach is some how get rid of the surplus world population through unspeakable means so that the tiny amount of green energy can cover them all. Every genocide in the name of redistribution of wealth are an example of this practice.

Or, a more common practice among environmental doomsdays practice to set the same goal for over the "next decades", as there are always "next decades". Still, the global mining operation could not meet the decarbonized goal regardless of how many times the deadlines are extended. ​

Mining

Extracting resources and producing wind and solar system are a gigantic obstacle that renewable-energy advocators overlook.

​To make one turbine, it takes 900 tons of steel, 2500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic. Solar power needs even more materials to fabricate in addition to silver, indium and glass.  
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To store electricity produced by wind and solar, production of batteries is needed. To make a single electric-car battery weight about 1000 pounds (453kg), it requires 500,000 pounds (226800 kg) of raw material. A ratio of 1:500.  Using gasoline system brings the ration down to 1:50, meaning its cost 10 times less tonnage of resources.

It also takes 100 barrels of oils worth of energy to produce batteries that can store one barrel of oil equivalent energy, there are no other way to get around it. 

With such huge increase in resources need for renewable energy, the world mining industry has to have at least 200% increase in copper, at least 500% increase in lithium, graphite and cobalt, 250% increase in silver and 1200% increase in indium. Rare-earth elements will have to raise up to 1000% by 2050 to meet the Green goal.

If electric vehicles replace conventional cars, demand for cobalt and lithium, will rise more than 20-fold. That doesn’t count batteries to back up wind and solar grids.

To meet such massive demand in mining, the world has to open new mines and to increase oppressive labor practice. However, it will cause more harm than good.

Thanks to the strict legal procedures in the United States and the EU, expending resources extraction is extremely costly. To open a new mine, it would take at least ten to twenty years, not including the ever increasing lengthy environment assessment.

Even if we eliminate the lengthy procedures, the environmental damages caused by extracting and refining resources in those areas untouched by human activities sharply contradict the future vision of the world without hydrocarbon.
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In addition, most resources needed for renewable energy projects are located in China which extreme oppressive labor practice is on the rise to keep the current global demand for critical metal and rare-earth mineral.

Annual Global Critical Metal Demand for Wind and PV, between 2020 and 2050.

A Rare-Earth Mine in China

Mining Labor Practice in China

​Even if the world ignore its human right issue, China's geopolitics ambition will prioritize resources to its business over outsiders, thus dooming any future expansion of renewable resources for the rest of the world. ​

Physics Limits

The last consideration for ten-fold increase in green tech is to improve the efficiency of the current renewable system. In other words, researchers are seeking way to make one unit of solar panel absorb multiple folds more power from the sun and one unit of wind turbine absorb more kinetic energy from the wind.

Environmentalist are increasingly seeking comfort in the thought that the technological innovation in wind and solar follows the same explosive trajectory of computing and communications in 2000 caused by smart phones.

However, it will not happen.  The physics limitation of wind and solar are  much different than computer which deals only with 1s and 0s.

For solar power, its limit is the Shockley-Queisser's Law states that the maximum solar conversion efficiency is 33.7 percent using the best material available. The best commercial Silicon photovoltaic cells achieve 26% conversion efficiency.

For wind, the limit is the Betz's Laws. The maximum wind conversion to energy is about 59.3%. Modern turbine already reach above 45%. Thus an increase ten-fold in renewable energy is unobtainable. 

Maximum solar energy conversion based on materials.

Illustration of Betz's Limit

Conclusion

• The next energy revolution caused by renewable energy will not happen, especially by 2050.
• Even with the current pace of technical development, ten-fold increase in solar and wind cannot be achieved by any normal means.
• Should policy makers misuse the power of the state to force renewable energy upon us, it will cause more devastating effects in term of human lives and irreversible environmental damage.

References:
The "New Energy Economy": An Exercise in Magical Thinking. Mark P. Mills. March 26, 2019
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible
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Metal Demand for Renewable Electricity Generation in The Netherlands - Navigating a Complex Supply Chain. 8. December 2018
https://www.copper8.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Metal-Demand-for-renewable-electricity-generation-in-the-Netherlands.pdf