They just aren't a good way to make energy. About a third of fossil fuel energy is wasted in production and transportation. A third! Another third is wasted turning fossil fuels into energy. Two thirds! The net energy efficiency of fossil fuels is about *37%*.

Compare that with cleantech. EVs convert electricity to movement with 80-90% efficiency. Heat pumps are *300%* efficient (the main fuel for your heat pump is the heat in the atmosphere, not the electricity it draws).

14/

Cleantech is just getting started - it's still in the hockey-stage phase. That means those efficiency numbers are only going *up*. Rivian just figured out how to remove 1.6 *miles* of copper wire from *each* vehicle. That's just *one* rev - there's doubtless lots of room for more redesigns that will further dematerialize EVs:

https://insideevs.com/news/722265/rivian-r1s-r1t-wiring/

15/

As McKibben points out, there's been a lot of justifiable concern that electrification will eventually use up all our available copper, but copper demand has remained flat even as electrification has soared - and this is why. We keep figuring out new ways to electrify with fewer materials:

https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/copper-wire-price-remains-stable-amidst-surplus-supply-and-expanding-mining-25416#:~:text=Global%20Copper%20wire%20Price%20Remains%20Stable%20Amidst%20Surplus%20Supply%20and%20Expanding%20Mining%20Activities

This is exactly what happened with previous iterations of tech.

16/

The material, energy and labor budgets of cars, buildings, furniture, etc all fell precipitously every time there was a new technique for manufacturing them. Renewables are at the *start* of that process. There's going to be a *lot* of this dematerialization in cleantech.

17/

Calculating the bill of materials for a planetary energy transition isn't a matter of multiplying the materials in current tech by the amount of new systems we'll need - as we create those new systems, we will constantly whittle down their materials.

What's more, global instability *drives* cleantech uptake. The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a surge in European renewables.

18/

The story that energy prices are rising due to renewables (or carbon taxes) is a total lie. Fossil fuels are getting much more expensive, thanks to both war and rampant, illegal price-fixing:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused

If not for renewables, the incredible energy shocks of the recent years would be *far* more severe.

19/

The renewables story is *very* good and it should bring you some comfort. But as McKibben points out, it's *still* not enough - yet. The examples of rapid tech uptake had big business on their side. America's living rooms filled with TV because America's largest businesses pulled out all the stops to convince everyone to buy a TV. By contrast, today's largest businesses - banks, oil companies and car companies - are working around the clock to *stop* cleantech adoption.

20/

We're on track to double our use of renewables before the decade is over. But to hold to the (already recklessly high) targets from the Paris Accord, we need to *triple* our renewables usage. As McKibben says, the difference between doubling and tripling our renewables by 2030 is the difference between "survivable trouble" and something much scarier.

21/

The US is experiencing a welcome surge in utility scale solar, but residential solar is stalling out as governments withdraw subsidies or even begin policies that actively restrict rooftop solar:

https://nitter.privacytools.io/curious_founder/status/1798049929082097842?s=51

McKibben says the difference between where we are now and bringing back the push for home solar generation is the difference between "fast" and "faster" - that is the difference between tripling renewables by 2030 (survivable) and doubling (eek).

22/

Capitalism stans who argue that we can survive the climate emergency with market tools will point to the good news on renewable and say that the market is the only way to transition to renewables. It's true that market forces are partly responsible for this fast transition. But the market is also the barrier to a *faster* (and thus survivable) transition.

23/

The oil companies, the banks who are so invested in fossil fuels, the petrostates who distort the world's politics - they're why we're not *much* farther along.

The climate emergency was never going to be neatly solved. We weren't going to get a neat novelistic climax that saw our problems sorted out in a single fell swoop.

24/

We're going to be fighting all the way to net zero, and after that, we'll still have decades of climate debt to pay down: fires, floods, habitat loss, zoonotic plagues, refugee crises.

But we should take our wins. Even if we're far from where we need to be on renewables, we're much farther along on renewables than we had any business hoping for, just a few years ago. The momentum is on our side. It's up to us to use that momentum and grow it.

25/

We're riding the hockey-stick, they're on that long, flat, static top of the S-curve. Their curve is leveling off and will start falling, ours will grow like crazy for the rest of our lives.

26/

On June 20th, I'll be in Oakland, CA to keynote the @Locusmag Awards:

https://locusmag.com/2024-locus-awards-weekend/

eof/

More governments should bring in a #CarbonTax to accelerate the transition; where carbon taxes are in place, they should be raised.

#ClimateChange #CanPol #cdnpoli