Alix Paultre, Editorial Director, PSD
One of the more interesting aspects of the migration towards renewable energy is that many assume that the goal is to eliminate fossil fuels. That is patently impossible, as there will always be a need for more and more energy in a developing world. The key is to create the best balance of energy sources and allocate them to the loads they are best suited to serve.
Frankly, there will never be enough energy. A recent article by Kevin Bullis in Technology Review recently pointed out, the US Energy Information Administration recently posted the Annual Energy Outlook 2016 Reference case projections, which reflect that the percentage of fossil fuel use will only decline to 76.6% by 2040, even with all the alternative energy coming into the grid.
A good analogy would be software and hardware. The software “fuel” runs the hardware “vehicle”, and there is always pressure to run faster with greater functionality. Once upon a time people were worried that either software would not keep up with hardware, or vice versa. Yet the memory volume and processor speeds always managed to keep up (relatively) with the software, and today you can’t put a word document from today on an old computer because the single file is bigger than the old machine’s entire memory. Power is like that.
Coal is a great example. Every time an advance in energy comes out, coal use drops. Yet a few years later, coal always bounces back because the need for energy is a rapacious beast that expands exponentially. The only real question is how cost-effective it is to generate. As long as people need more power than is produced by other means, coal will always have a comeback path.
The rise of solar and the subsequent non-profitability of coal in the new energy market may be a temporary thing, or then again solar by its sheer scalability will eventually push coal out. Every application space where a Silicon solution has been created, that solution has eventually dominated the marketplace. As volumes grow and production scale brings panel prices down, coal may find itself finally pushed out as the bottom-dollar solution.
That doesn’t mean, however, that fossil fuels are on their way out, not by a longshot. Oil is just too damn useful, and the energy densities of its various distillates cannot be currently beaten by other energy-storage technologies not relying on explosive chemical processes. Ditto for natural gas. Fossil fuels have maintained their dominance because nothing else is as powerful and cost-effective.
What this means for us is that we should strive to replace fossil fuels in every possible application space that can be served by alternate energy sources. Small and short-haul vehicles should be electric, while heavy and long-haul vehicles can benefit from a hybrid setup that maximizes the efficiency of the fossil fuels used. Renewables can significantly reduce the need for fossil fuels in the grid as well, enabling significant reductions in consumption.
