I'm sorry, Ed, but I find your first chart just plain depressing. Its prominence is yet more evidence of the utter lack of systems thinking among so many today. There is zero utility in exponential expansion of an energy source that is often unavailable and is use-it-somehow when it is on, without cost-effective ways to make it part of a 24/7 energy system.
And that is even without contemplating the folly of trying to move humanity to energy sources having low energy density.
I AM optimistic about technology. Not so much about judgement.
Which polity are you referring to, and what is the subsidy level there?
I can assure you that grid load in Pakistan dropped 9% last year because of all the cheap Chinese solar panels being put on top of every factory, warehouse, and dwelling. They can't even keep track of them, much less subsidize them; they're guessing how many there are from airphotos.
Have you actually read the article you linked to? That last part about harming the grid?
Ok, you do realize that the idea that poor people in a poor country like Pakistan installing solar panels to compensate for the lack of basic infrastructure is a good thing is at best scandalous, at worst, criminal.
I recently met a Zimbabwean guide who saved all he could to buy solar panels, at a price which might seem cheap to you but represented a fortune to him, to bring electricity to his house because “he wanted to save the planet”? Or because developing countries lack basic infrastructure and many a corrupt NGO works overtime to prevent them from developing through access to really cheap and available energy like coal, but rather prefer to realize their wet dreams by forcing unreliable and expensive alternative sources?
Do you even understand the concept that energy is a necessary condition for development, not a result of development?
But I digress here. If you really believe your quote demonstrates anything I’m sorry to say that it is just a total lack of understanding, empathy, and awareness.
Forbes is one of the most right-wing publications out there, but isn't owned by oil, it's owned by investors who simply seek the highest returns. Those are the folks to really listen to, because they run the world, and they are investing in solar, even without subsidies, and pulling away from longer-term (exploration) oil investments.
You are right to point out that IEA have been predicting peak coal for a while and it hasn't happened. However I am very surprised that you are comparing the solar chart that starts at zero with a coal chart with a false zero to show to imply the growth rates are comparable. Not what I expect from your usually balanced analysis. Coal has only grown by 1% in the last year hasn't it? and the pace of growth has slowed considerably from previous years. Still growing, yes, but hardly comparable with the growth rates of solar.
You're absolutely right that the growth rates are not directly comparable, though I'm not sure I said they were. The key point is the pattern in forecasts vs outcomes - not the growth rates. Frankly, it would be astounding if coal consumption were growing at anything like the rate of solar output given the latter is a nascent technology rather than a centuries-old one. The real point of this piece isn't about growth rates; it's that there's a flip side to the solar chart which needs to be pondered alongside it - but often isn't. NB Chinese coal consumption rose by 6% last year, not 1% (the 1% is the IEA's forecast for this year which is, given its past record, somewhat questionable). The rise in China's coal consumption in the past year is more coal than Britain burnt in the past decade and a half. That's not exactly trivial.
Solar is also growing from a much smaller base, so 1% growth of coal is much larger in amount than a higher percentage of solar.
This is also true of fossil fuels in general.
For example, between 2010 and 2023 coal alone (3577 TWh) added roughly the same TWh as wind (1979 TWh) and solar (1608) combined. And the other fossil fuels far surpassed that amount. Natural gas added 8508 TWh, while oil added 6510 TWh. All fossil fuels combined added 18,595 TWh of energy, which was four times all Green energy sources combined (4615 TWh).
Yes the solar scam. It’s very real. Build solar panels and EVs in China using thermal coal. Build batteries with nickel from Indonesia smelted using ? Yes thermal coal. Amazing how people have no idea where things are made and how they are made.
Absolutely. By releasing all that sequestered CO2 over the past 200 or so years we have extended the green life of the planet by probably several hundred million years. Had the then trend continued, incremental sequestration would have taken atmospheric CO2 to below the critical 180 level within a few hundred million years, leaving earth barren and lifeless. CO2 is the stuff of life - we should celebrate it.
Hi Ed, I ran the numbers here. In 2023, China exported 220 GW of solar to the world. To make that you need roughly 630 TWh of electricity, which is still a small share of China’s total electricity consumption which was 9500 TWh in the same year. For the benefits of solarising the world, I think this checks out and essentially, I think the growth of coal is driven by other factors (subsidies, state owned enterprises, distorted incentives etc.). There’s no reason why all that solar can’t be made using electricity generated from clean sources.
Yes, there is a reason. You can only effectively produce solar panels with excess energy and the EROE of a solar panel is barely 1 in optimum conditions. Which means that for each solar panel produced, transported, and installed, you are actually wasting energy, in this case, from coal. Solar panels should only be used on boats, off-grid or very specific applications but definitely not in subsidized rooftop and solar farms. A total waste.
References please. The full weight of peer reviewed academic literature in reputable journals does not back your point. This must be the sort of "analysis" that corporate funded think tanks churn out who have their own agenda
We also know what “the full weight of peer reviewed literature” means so I recommend going into the details to understand how things work. Maybe you already do, boasting a Dr. in your handle, but maybe you don’t, depending on what that is about.
That's an old reference. Here is Carbon Brief summarising work published in Nature - a far more reputable journal. I also feel sorry you have to resort to ad hominem attacks on me. Get a life :)
Ok, so you’re getting aggressive. I just wanted to understand whether you understood what we were talking about but never mind, if you take it personally, you have your reasons.
Thanks for the reference which I’ll read through as I’m interested in learning. First comment from reading the intro is that the paper you mentioned is prospective projecting into 2050 based on all sorts of models and assumptions. As I mentioned I’ll read through it and understand whether it covers real life or just hypothesis. And if you’re still interested, I’ll parse the key finds for you.
There is no solar panel factory powered by solar panels... your article took a good step forward in helping techno optimist realize this... But your solar graph is a bit misleading installed GW is only the rating of the equipment not the energy resource. Who knows how many GW of solar is under performing... there is no energy transition.
quite obvious for any decent engineer, not a politician. If you need to built new infrastructure, you need energy. Since at the UN happily close their eyes and let China do whatever it takes, most of the renewable energy devices will be built on coal. The buyer (e.g. the EU) could have forced lower carbon (e.g. gas) or zero carbon (nuclear) energies to be used and saved the european industry of solar panels. But if God intended for politicians (and fellow activists and biased "scientists") to have common sense, should give them brains. Case in point is Angela Merkel which combine both impersonations and made most of the damage. Funnily enough, UE legislate that third world countries could not sell beef of grain produced in newly deforested areas. Because that helps inefficient agricultural producers in the UE and only hurts real third world countries, not China.
Your book was one of my 2024 highlights and thanks for this article as well. One comment: the "Evil twin" chart doesn't have the same y axis so it makes it hard to compare coal and solar's relative impacts on the green transition. It would be useful to see them both as kw/h, or perhaps gw/year.
God, the stupid in these comments - It burns.. No, more carbon in the atmosphere isn't good - 98% of scientists agree. No, solar panels aren't a bad energy investment - the vast majority of studies say they pay for their creation in a few months, even in Northern Europe. Once perovskite panels become commonplace over the next few years, that will come down as well..
I don’t quite see the point of this. Of course we’re going to need to use existing energy systems to create new energy systems. This would only be a problem if the old systems were to continue on after we have the new systems.
The post suggests that us needing to use fossil fuel energy to transition to renewables is something we need to think about. That was the ‘point’. I’m saying I don’t see that point, because of course we’re going to have to use what we already haven to transition to what we don’t have yet.
Having just read More… More… More by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, I am of the opinion that peak coal is a long way off, and the idea of an 'energy transition' is misleading, given that although there will be a significant increase in green energy technologies, there will be not be a sizeable move away from fossil fuels for a long time to come – they will be used together, perhaps for a century plus. Highly recommended reading, along with The Material World (Ed Conway of course), The Coming Wave (Mustafa Suleyman), Chip War (Chris Miller), Volt Rush (Henry Sanderson) and How the World Really Works (Vaclav Smil).
A chart of the consumer price of electricity in places where solar is growing would be useful since we know the price of solar equipment is dropping in places where coal power is growing.
I'm sorry, Ed, but I find your first chart just plain depressing. Its prominence is yet more evidence of the utter lack of systems thinking among so many today. There is zero utility in exponential expansion of an energy source that is often unavailable and is use-it-somehow when it is on, without cost-effective ways to make it part of a 24/7 energy system.
And that is even without contemplating the folly of trying to move humanity to energy sources having low energy density.
I AM optimistic about technology. Not so much about judgement.
If the solar-buyers were not making money, they'd have stopped years ago.
Then why is solar heavily subsidized?
Which polity are you referring to, and what is the subsidy level there?
I can assure you that grid load in Pakistan dropped 9% last year because of all the cheap Chinese solar panels being put on top of every factory, warehouse, and dwelling. They can't even keep track of them, much less subsidize them; they're guessing how many there are from airphotos.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/commodities/2024/11/22/surprise-solar-boom-in-pakistan-helps-millions-but-harms-grid/
Have you actually read the article you linked to? That last part about harming the grid?
Ok, you do realize that the idea that poor people in a poor country like Pakistan installing solar panels to compensate for the lack of basic infrastructure is a good thing is at best scandalous, at worst, criminal.
I recently met a Zimbabwean guide who saved all he could to buy solar panels, at a price which might seem cheap to you but represented a fortune to him, to bring electricity to his house because “he wanted to save the planet”? Or because developing countries lack basic infrastructure and many a corrupt NGO works overtime to prevent them from developing through access to really cheap and available energy like coal, but rather prefer to realize their wet dreams by forcing unreliable and expensive alternative sources?
Do you even understand the concept that energy is a necessary condition for development, not a result of development?
But I digress here. If you really believe your quote demonstrates anything I’m sorry to say that it is just a total lack of understanding, empathy, and awareness.
Forbes is one of the most right-wing publications out there, but isn't owned by oil, it's owned by investors who simply seek the highest returns. Those are the folks to really listen to, because they run the world, and they are investing in solar, even without subsidies, and pulling away from longer-term (exploration) oil investments.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/renewable-energy-is-now-the-cheapest-option-even-without-subsidies/
You are right to point out that IEA have been predicting peak coal for a while and it hasn't happened. However I am very surprised that you are comparing the solar chart that starts at zero with a coal chart with a false zero to show to imply the growth rates are comparable. Not what I expect from your usually balanced analysis. Coal has only grown by 1% in the last year hasn't it? and the pace of growth has slowed considerably from previous years. Still growing, yes, but hardly comparable with the growth rates of solar.
You're absolutely right that the growth rates are not directly comparable, though I'm not sure I said they were. The key point is the pattern in forecasts vs outcomes - not the growth rates. Frankly, it would be astounding if coal consumption were growing at anything like the rate of solar output given the latter is a nascent technology rather than a centuries-old one. The real point of this piece isn't about growth rates; it's that there's a flip side to the solar chart which needs to be pondered alongside it - but often isn't. NB Chinese coal consumption rose by 6% last year, not 1% (the 1% is the IEA's forecast for this year which is, given its past record, somewhat questionable). The rise in China's coal consumption in the past year is more coal than Britain burnt in the past decade and a half. That's not exactly trivial.
Solar is also growing from a much smaller base, so 1% growth of coal is much larger in amount than a higher percentage of solar.
This is also true of fossil fuels in general.
For example, between 2010 and 2023 coal alone (3577 TWh) added roughly the same TWh as wind (1979 TWh) and solar (1608) combined. And the other fossil fuels far surpassed that amount. Natural gas added 8508 TWh, while oil added 6510 TWh. All fossil fuels combined added 18,595 TWh of energy, which was four times all Green energy sources combined (4615 TWh).
Yes the solar scam. It’s very real. Build solar panels and EVs in China using thermal coal. Build batteries with nickel from Indonesia smelted using ? Yes thermal coal. Amazing how people have no idea where things are made and how they are made.
Love your book. Depressing that China is still using coal. You may be an optimist but I am a pessimistic. Human beings are greedy!
Using the most economical energy source is sensible, not "greedy."
atmosphere needs about 300 ppm more CO2 for optimum plant growth.
sparky billboards are a stupid waste.
Absolutely. By releasing all that sequestered CO2 over the past 200 or so years we have extended the green life of the planet by probably several hundred million years. Had the then trend continued, incremental sequestration would have taken atmospheric CO2 to below the critical 180 level within a few hundred million years, leaving earth barren and lifeless. CO2 is the stuff of life - we should celebrate it.
Hi Ed, I ran the numbers here. In 2023, China exported 220 GW of solar to the world. To make that you need roughly 630 TWh of electricity, which is still a small share of China’s total electricity consumption which was 9500 TWh in the same year. For the benefits of solarising the world, I think this checks out and essentially, I think the growth of coal is driven by other factors (subsidies, state owned enterprises, distorted incentives etc.). There’s no reason why all that solar can’t be made using electricity generated from clean sources.
Yes, there is a reason. You can only effectively produce solar panels with excess energy and the EROE of a solar panel is barely 1 in optimum conditions. Which means that for each solar panel produced, transported, and installed, you are actually wasting energy, in this case, from coal. Solar panels should only be used on boats, off-grid or very specific applications but definitely not in subsidized rooftop and solar farms. A total waste.
References please. The full weight of peer reviewed academic literature in reputable journals does not back your point. This must be the sort of "analysis" that corporate funded think tanks churn out who have their own agenda
Even though you don’t back up your own arguments here is a link to just one serious study.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301379
We also know what “the full weight of peer reviewed literature” means so I recommend going into the details to understand how things work. Maybe you already do, boasting a Dr. in your handle, but maybe you don’t, depending on what that is about.
That's an old reference. Here is Carbon Brief summarising work published in Nature - a far more reputable journal. I also feel sorry you have to resort to ad hominem attacks on me. Get a life :)
https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-wind-nuclear-amazingly-low-carbon-footprints/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Ok, so you’re getting aggressive. I just wanted to understand whether you understood what we were talking about but never mind, if you take it personally, you have your reasons.
Thanks for the reference which I’ll read through as I’m interested in learning. First comment from reading the intro is that the paper you mentioned is prospective projecting into 2050 based on all sorts of models and assumptions. As I mentioned I’ll read through it and understand whether it covers real life or just hypothesis. And if you’re still interested, I’ll parse the key finds for you.
There is no solar panel factory powered by solar panels... your article took a good step forward in helping techno optimist realize this... But your solar graph is a bit misleading installed GW is only the rating of the equipment not the energy resource. Who knows how many GW of solar is under performing... there is no energy transition.
quite obvious for any decent engineer, not a politician. If you need to built new infrastructure, you need energy. Since at the UN happily close their eyes and let China do whatever it takes, most of the renewable energy devices will be built on coal. The buyer (e.g. the EU) could have forced lower carbon (e.g. gas) or zero carbon (nuclear) energies to be used and saved the european industry of solar panels. But if God intended for politicians (and fellow activists and biased "scientists") to have common sense, should give them brains. Case in point is Angela Merkel which combine both impersonations and made most of the damage. Funnily enough, UE legislate that third world countries could not sell beef of grain produced in newly deforested areas. Because that helps inefficient agricultural producers in the UE and only hurts real third world countries, not China.
Your book was one of my 2024 highlights and thanks for this article as well. One comment: the "Evil twin" chart doesn't have the same y axis so it makes it hard to compare coal and solar's relative impacts on the green transition. It would be useful to see them both as kw/h, or perhaps gw/year.
God, the stupid in these comments - It burns.. No, more carbon in the atmosphere isn't good - 98% of scientists agree. No, solar panels aren't a bad energy investment - the vast majority of studies say they pay for their creation in a few months, even in Northern Europe. Once perovskite panels become commonplace over the next few years, that will come down as well..
‘It’s still possible to envisage a future with lower carbon emissions’ - why? Why would you want that?
He doesn’t like plants? Or life? Or both?
I don’t quite see the point of this. Of course we’re going to need to use existing energy systems to create new energy systems. This would only be a problem if the old systems were to continue on after we have the new systems.
You only need to read the other comments to know that this post doesn’t need “a point”.
The post suggests that us needing to use fossil fuel energy to transition to renewables is something we need to think about. That was the ‘point’. I’m saying I don’t see that point, because of course we’re going to have to use what we already haven to transition to what we don’t have yet.
Having just read More… More… More by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, I am of the opinion that peak coal is a long way off, and the idea of an 'energy transition' is misleading, given that although there will be a significant increase in green energy technologies, there will be not be a sizeable move away from fossil fuels for a long time to come – they will be used together, perhaps for a century plus. Highly recommended reading, along with The Material World (Ed Conway of course), The Coming Wave (Mustafa Suleyman), Chip War (Chris Miller), Volt Rush (Henry Sanderson) and How the World Really Works (Vaclav Smil).
Don’t usually read Substack but some of the nonsensical evidence-free assertions on here from people with no credentials is as bad as Facebook.
Oh gosh. If you think things are going remotely in the right direction, I’ve got some pretty bad news for you. (Maybe read my blog)
A chart of the consumer price of electricity in places where solar is growing would be useful since we know the price of solar equipment is dropping in places where coal power is growing.