It’s primarily a political issue at this point. While there will always be some need for fossil fuels, a decent majority of our transportation and manufacturing infrastructure can be electrified.
Comment on How Fossil Fuel Disruptions Lead to Booms in Solar and Batteries
eleitl@lemmy.zip 3 weeks agoIt’s not changing, look at the industrial fabrication and supply chain for solar PV and wind. None of that is powered by renewable electricity.
Renewable infra are a fossil multiplier (but not by much), but the total fraction of fossil in primary energy use is effectively constant, because use of fossil fuels is also increasing.
zd9@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
eleitl@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Assertions do not make a reality. Transportation is only a fraction of primary energy use, but even there: ship diesels burning bunker fuel and jets burning aviation kerosene have 40+ MJ/l energy density going for them. Prohibitive for air transport. Ships, look at energy density of sodium ion and the price point of a battery bank needed to cross an ocean.
zd9@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
lol you didn’t even read my comment
eleitl@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yes. You think it’s politics, while the issue is physics.
silence7@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
What I see is a system that’s steadily shifting from dieect fossil fuel use to electricity, and with that, reducing the amount of fossil fuels burned. We’re not done making the change, but it has definitely started
eleitl@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Thing is, there is no energy transition. Renewable infrastructure, built using fossil fuels is stacked on top of rising fossil energy use i0.wp.com/…/World-energy-fossil-fuels-vs-add-ons.…
silence7@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
That’s what the beginning looks like. We’re just at the cusp of where renewables growth gets to be fast enough to start winding down fossil fuel use at a global level and not just for a few big territories or countries
eleitl@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
We’re already past primary energy use peak per capita, and we’re distinctly past net energy use. At the same time, extraction of increasingly dilute mineral resources necessary for technology requires progressively more and more energy.
So I would expect we start losing fossil inputs quickly, since increasingly unable to extract them, while the renewable infrastructure will not have grown sufficiently, and then starting to decline, since we cannot sustain them with renewable energy alone.
At the same time we’re going to lose a lot of population (excess deaths of several billions this century), so at least whatever resources are left will last longer than at the current use rate.