Mark Diesendorf: Science tells us that, to avoid devastating climate change, we must rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero. How fast is possible? This article focuses on the transition of the electricity industry to 100% renewable electricity together with energy efficiency, for the following reasons: energy generation is the major contributor to emissions; energy efficiency together with renewable energy form the cheapest, safest and cleanest combination of energy technologies; and a renewable energy future is likely to be based mostly on renewable electricity, because electricity is the least difficult form of energy to transition. So far two extreme viewpoints have characterised the debate. On one hand, the ground-breaking Zero Carbon Stationary Energy Plan set a decadal transition as its aspirational target. At the other extreme, Vaclav Smil, an expert on historical energy transitions, argues in his book that ‘the process of restructuring the modern high-energy industrial and post-industrial civilization on the basis of non-fossil, that is, overwhelmingly renewable, energy flows will be much more challenging that [sic] was replacing wood by coal and then coal by hydrocarbons.’
Renew Economy 21st June 2018 read more »
