The efficiency of fossil fuel energy sources is in their energy by volume. That’s is and has always been their main benefit.
While it is true, that their energy density is high, often it is actually much less relevant due to the poor efficiency of the devices burning said fuel. With cars, you’ll notice that ICE cars have a pretty terrible efficieny themselves, which partly negates the effect of high energy density of fossil fuels. These days electric cars and ICE cars can have very similar driving ranges despite their differences in energy density.
antler@feddit.online 6 months ago
As the blog post discusses, there are multiple ways to measure efficiency; energy density is one, and possibly the most important advantage of hydrocarbons. The first figure in the blog post describes another: quantity of mineral extraction per energy production. From that metric, renewables are much more efficient.
Personally, I’m not bothered by the blog post. The advantages of fossil fuels are well known - that’s why they continue to be widely used. Their main disadvantage, emissions, are also we’ll publicized. The perspective of the blog post is that there are other, less discussed metrics under which renewables have an advantage.