Daily Episode 236 - Renewables have made big strides: Can they save us now?

0:00Hey, Cory here. We've had an influx of new listeners, and so I just want to make sure that if you are new to the podcast, you don't just jump in and start listening to these daily episodes which we've been doing. Please go back and listen to the first at least eight episodes. So you have an idea of what collapses, what it is that Cory is talking about. Also if you've been with us for a while and you're enjoying the content, please join us on Patreon. We would love to see you there. There's a link, as always, in the description. Yesterday, I laid out a little bit what this week was going to look like on the podcast. So the topic yesterday was on the fact that the UN has conceded that 1.5 degrees Celsius is no longer a viable target. We are going to pass it. If we are going to stay below 1.8 degrees Celsius, we have to do a massive amount of work as a society, as a people to make that happen. We talked about how the new goal, the new version of staying below 1.5 is now to stay below

1:031.8 and eventually get back to 1.5. We also talked about why I feel cynical about that and whether or not it will happen. Though I think I won't go so far as to say it's impossible. I mentioned two other episode topics for this week, one of which is today and it's going to be an update on whether or not renewables can save us. This was a request that somebody had made for me to do an episode on this given the fact that renewables are making such an intense climb. Knowing that, is it feasible that we stay below that 1.8 that we come back to 1.5? And is that enough to save us? It's a broad conversation. It's a more lengthy conversation that we have in these daily episodes, but I'm going to touch on some thoughts and some ideas around that, give some updates on the state of renewables and what's happening there and just some general personal opinions on the topic, I suppose. And the last thing that I mentioned I wanted to talk about the third episode, which will be coming out tomorrow, is on the merit of fighting for change, whether or not that

2:08is something that is worth doing. I've had a little bit of a wake up call on that front recently and I want to talk through that so that'll be a little bit more of a meta conversation. Perhaps a little bit of a break away from the normal day to day of what we see on the podcast. So let's jump in. The first episode that I did on this topic, can energy save us was actually between Kellan and I and it was all the way back in I believe it was late 2020. I'm not sure the episode number, but you can just search it by that title. I think it's a will renewable energy save us something like that. And the answer in that episode was essentially no renewables can't save us. We walked through the limitations of renewables. We walked through the advantages of renewables and how they were growing at the time and the projections. So here we are six years later approaching 1.5 degrees Celsius. What have renewables done up to this point? What direction are they headed and what does it all mean for us as a society? Now there are lots of different sources from which you can find information on this topic.

3:12You can read from climate optimists. You can read from climate pessimists. You can read from everything in between. There's a different element that you can read this from and that's what we're going to do here today. And that is from a sort of business economics standpoint. I think this is a good maybe a little more objective view from which to look at it. Because this is from people who care about this from a financial perspective, maybe not so much a save the world perspective and that lets it be a little less emotional and a little less biased. So this is actually from McKinsey and company. They are a very large consulting firm which take a look. They take a look at macro trends and help businesses make decisions based on those trends. They have a report came out earlier this year called tracking the energy transition. Where are we now with now over a decade since the landmark Paris agreement. The global focus on decarbonization and sustainability has unlocked tangible gains in renewable energy

4:12build out and energy efficiency to date 77% of global economies have a net zero target either proposed or legislated but with a key interim decarbonization milestone now under just five years away. The energy transition shows signs of slowing momentum at precisely the time it needs to speed up if targets are to be met. So in that very first paragraph, we get some clues about what's been going on here and they do follow the overall trends that have been seeing from other sources and sites as well. We have made massive gains in renewables. They are growing and they are growing rapidly globally. Some areas more than others, some countries are prioritizing this and doing a much better job, some less. And it is truly impressive and inspiring the growth rate and the change at which it has come. As the second part says, the energy transition shows signs of slowing momentum at precisely the time it needs to speed up if targets are to be met. Now this conversation about increasing renewables at a rate that allow us to hit targets is separate from the conversation about whether even hitting those targets is enough to save us, right?

5:18So it's two different conversations. We're starting here with the first targets have been made. We're trying to aim for a certain amount of renewables to help replace fossil fuel emissions so that we can begin that journey towards net zero. Right now emissions are climbing. We have to actually reverse that so that emissions are reducing. And once emissions start reducing, that's not enough. We have to get to a net zero. So it's quite the journey and we're not even over the peak. We haven't even stopped growing yet. So our first part of the conversation is can we hit net zero? Those targets, right? The second part of the conversation again will be if we hit net zero, does that save us from collapse? Back to the article, recent announcements that major hydrogen projects are being paused or canceled only underscore this shift in focus and momentum. With reasons cited including weak customer demand or land being assigned to data center development instead. Agh! Sorry if that was loud in your ear, but my word. How frustrating is that to hear? We've got all this momentum going in the right direction and it is being derailed by data center development and weak customer demand.

6:26Major hydrogen projects, hydrogen being this incredible tool for efficient energy use and money and businesses and individuals are saying, nah, let's do the AI thing instead. In 2024, back to the article here, we published the energy transition, where are we really? Which explored the reality gap between the deployment of eight key decarbonization technologies and their 2030 targets in Europe and the US. Even then, the data suggested these regions were at risk of missing these critical targets. Today, less than 15% of the low emissions technologies required to meet parasoline targets by 2050 have been deployed. Only a few percentage points higher than two years ago. This poses the question, how can we be so far off from these targets despite the consistent and encouraging acceleration in clean technology deployment? One of the key elements of a successful energy transition. Recently, some countries and companies have scaled back or delayed their short-term decarbonization commitments, particularly in the context of growing pressures around energy security and affordability.

7:29And despite all the progress and commitments to decarbonize over the past decade, global emissions have still risen 9% since 2015. So this is on that point I was just making that we haven't reduced emissions yet. We are growing in the amount of renewables that are out there. As humanity and population and economics and all these things continue to grow, we are using more energy. The share from a year over year basis of that energy growth that is being taken up by fossil fuels is decreasing. Renewable energy is taking over more of the energy growth, which is a good sign. It's a positive for sure. But the net amount of emissions is still growing. It has risen 9% since 2015. It will obviously be impossible to hit a net zero target if the global emissions of fossil fuels are still rising. We have work to do to cut that gap down to zero so that all new growth is being handled by renewables.

8:31And not only that, but the amount of emissions on an annual basis from fossil fuels has to decrease and dramatically and quickly. Again, to the article, not only is the priority landscape shifting, but the geopolitical environment is also now more unpredictable, which could impact the pace of the energy transition significantly. With increasing defense budgets and uncertainty from tariffs, fewer resources may be available for decarbonization on a national level, while tariffs could lead to an inefficient global supply chains, potentially slowing efforts to transition to cleaner energy. What a great definition of catabolic collapse. As countries begin to isolate, they begin to worry about their own defense, their own economy. We're seeing this extremely high in the US right now, increasing defense budgets, same thing in the UN, uncertainty from tariffs. Thanks, Trump, right? Fewer resources are available for decarbonization. This is what I talked about last week. As life becomes harder, as collapse continues, the amount of resources available to dedicate towards fixing the problem are reduced.

9:34Along with the political willpower, along with the will of the people, in many cases, to stand up and say this is what we require. If the economy is getting worse and they're struggling to have jobs and put food on the table and have a bed to sleep in, they're not going to be thinking so much about prioritizing long-term climate resolutions and any sort of sacrifices financially, or from their taxpayer dollars or whatever that it's going to require to do that, they're going to vote in a way that allows them to live and survive in the short term. So the article asks this question, is the world on track to reach its 2030 low-carbon technology build-out plan? To answer it, we evaluate nine key decarbonization technologies across China, Europe, and the United States to see if these regions are currently on track to reach their 2030 clean technology targets. Now, for the sake of time, I'm not going to go through every single one of these. At least, I'm not going to read the whole article. We'll talk about some of these as we go. But to summarize, the article says this, despite progress in certain technologies, several regions may not be on track to meet their 2030 decarbonization goals.

10:39However, there is time for regions and companies to make significant changes to ensure decarbonization by 2050. While there is currently a gap in the required investments across various low-carbon technologies and regions to meet stated net zero targets, a reversal in policy or an acceleration of capital deployment could be possible. Historically, rapid course corrections have occurred. The COVID-19 response, for example, in the financial bailouts in 2008, although the contexts were different, these examples demonstrate the potential for swift action. With only five years until 2030, the urgency is growing. Stakeholders across the value chain can revisit their decarbonization plans to ensure they are still sufficient to achieve their net zero goals. It looked at various different things like battery energy storage systems, like solar PV, like offshore wind. It looked at the individual regions and the routes that they have to net zero. And that is essentially the answer it came to. They're not on target. Things can change. Perhaps we can hit the 2050 targets. Still, if there is a severe enough correction. And that's sort of what we talked about last week. This idea that, hey, if we can just keep it below 1.8 and 1.8 could still be possible if everybody pulls and lifts together and there's this massive change.

11:46And like I said, I'm not here to say that's impossible. Sitting in the midst of a Trump presidency in which we are just going completely backwards. The wrong direction in all of this. It can feel like it's going to be this way forever. And who knows, it may be from a political standpoint. Conservatism, Trumpism, magaism may be here for a long time yet. And maybe not. Maybe Trump and the GOP will fall out of power. And maybe the pendulum will swing the other way. And maybe a leader will rise in the US who will take control and make major investments. And major policy changes in the direction that we need to head, right? Maybe the tariffs, like I talked about in this article, can be removed. And maybe the economy can be improved. And maybe through all of this, the US and other nations around the world, after the wars are solved, we'll be able to focus their attention again on the priorities of reducing emissions. That maybe the slowing of the momentum that we've seen can be reversed and the momentum can be picked up.

12:47Like I'm not saying it's impossible. I don't feel guilty for being cynical about it based on where we are at today. And again, this quite objective article looking at it from an economic view is saying the same thing. So from that perspective, will renewables save us? Well, it seems like right now they are growing. And the world would certainly be a worse place if we hadn't done any renewables at all. If we truly relied on fossil fuels for 100% of our energy consumption, we would be creating a much worse future than what we currently face. And every bit that renewables continue to grow, and therefore every bit that emissions from fossil fuels continue to fall, will create a better future than the one we could have had. So the real question we're asking here is not, were renewables a good idea? Or are renewables worth it? Because in either case, I think the answer is yes, they make for a better future. The question we're answering is will renewables save us from collapse?

13:47And this can be looked at again from two different perspectives here. One is in the domain of climate change, because that's where renewables are really out to save us. Right? And to answer that question, I think we have to look at where we are already at from a climate change perspective. And what is already essentially guaranteed based on the momentum of climate change at the moment? So we might ask the question, what if we did hit all of our targets? And what if we did hit net zero? And what if we could really do what the UN talked about yesterday, which is to keep warming below 1.8, and to eventually get it back down to 1.5? If this was the only problem that the world was facing, that problem being climate change, and the question was, can we avoid collapse by keeping our warming to below 1.8? The answer might well be yes. Like the UN said last week, there is no good future at this point with the amount of warming we're talking about, even at 1.5 to 1.8.

14:49It is going to cause catastrophe worldwide. It is already causing catastrophe worldwide, and it's going to get worse, and potentially substantially worse. Does that mean that it has to lead to societal collapse? No, again, if we isolate the issue to just global warming at 1.5 to 1.8 degrees, does not necessarily mean that we're going to have a civilizational collapse worldwide. There will be localities, there will be nations that suffer collapse, for sure. There would still be upheaval, there would still be mass migration, not to the same degree as if we hit two, or 2.5 or three or five degrees. But could we avoid collapse in that hypothetical situation? Okay, I think that it could be positive that that would be possible. But that requires us to believe that the models currently are correct and that we can stay below 1.8. When you introduce the idea of tipping points, when you introduce the idea of feedback loops of cascading failures, of warmth that is already baked in, the aerosol masking effect,

15:49then the question really becomes, and I don't think the models can accurately project this. What amount of warming are we guaranteed to receive, even if we hit those targets? If we hit net zero today, that doesn't mean that warming stops today. Worming lags by a decade, they say. So for the next 10 years, we're going to experience warming from the effects of emissions that we've done over the last 10 years. To me, personally, that means that we shoot beyond 1.5, like they've said, and at the continuing melting of ice in the Arctic, and melting of glaciers, the increased warmth in our oceans, the blue water, and lack of albedo, the tipping point in the Amazon and other rainforests throughout the world in our water systems, the increase of moisture in the atmosphere, like all of these things continue to create an amount of warming that might well take us beyond that 1.5, 1.8 and into the twos by itself. So while I don't think that it's impossible to say that we stay below 1.8,

16:50I think it is highly unlikely and that we don't understand all of the impacts that such a complex system as climate change can create, and that we do then likely head into warming that does start to pretty much necessitate, collapse. And again, we're still just talking about inside the climate change sphere. Now, the bigger answer to this question will renewables save us? Is that collapse is not only caused by climate change? If you harken back to the first 8 episodes of this podcast, there is so much more to collapse than just climate change. Climate change is the big, noose hanging around our necks. Essentially, it's the cherry on top. It's the sort of big, long-term tier of collapse. If climate change continues, society cannot continue to grow food and have the water necessary and all of the other complexities that are required in society. But even if climate change was not a problem, we have all of the other issues that we talk about in the first 8 episodes of this podcast. The ways that we pollute the earth go so far beyond just releasing fossil fuels into the atmosphere.

17:54And as a matter of fact, renewables create more of those pollutants. As we mine the earth for resources and put waste back into it, the heavy metals, the microplastics, the chemicals, the pollutions in the waterways, the ecological disasters and the biodiversity loss. Renewables don't fix that. And as a matter of fact, if we fix the energy problem, if we find ways to give us more and more energy in which we call clean energy, then the jeven's paradox applies. And we use more and more energy and cause more and more problems than we did previously. If we can feel guilt-free about using as much energy as we want because hey, it's through solar panels and wind turbines, then that fuels more growth and more growth can mean more people, more consumption, more pollutants, more diversity loss, more ecological disaster, less open space, less nature, less trees, all of which are vital and necessary for human life. I have done episode after episode dozens, hundreds of episodes on the individual complexities

18:57that make society work. And many of those, maybe even most of those are independent of climate change and renewables don't fix those. And in many cases renewables make those worse. This is again not to harp on or be cynical about renewables. They are vastly important. They are a net good. I think in reducing the harms of climate change, they are a necessary. But in my opinion, it does not mean that they will save us. We've built a world that is so immensely complex. There are 8.3 plus billion of us to keep alive. And naturally, each and every one of us wants, feels entitled to or deserves a good standard of living, a quality of life. And in order to reach that, economies exist in which we've built a system of capitalism which requires growth. It requires more, more, more, and like the bacteria and the Petri dish, as everything grows exponentially,

19:57we are headed on a crash course as our debt grows exponentially, as our resource extraction grows exponentially, as our energy consumption grows exponentially, as biodiversity loss grows exponentially. All of this adds up to that age-old phrase that you cannot grow infinitely on a finite planet. And renewables are not going to stop that. Renewables can make for a better tomorrow. They can even slow things down if collapse was to come through climate change than renewables are necessary to help mitigate that. We could solve the nuclear fusion problem tomorrow, right? And they're looking like we're getting there. Little by little, new promising advancements in fusion are happening. And in 30 years, who knows, maybe we'll have a world in which renewables don't matter from a, you know, solar and a wind perspective because we'll have large-scale commercial, widely-viable nuclear fusion. I'm not saying that's impossible either. Will that save us? A technology in which energy is abundant and cheap,

21:00if not free, widely accessible to everyone? No, that doesn't save us. It means each one of those exponential points suddenly hits a whole new, essentially vertical trajectory. Anyway, we can only keep climbing so far. And the further we climb, the harder we will fall, which is why we have talked about so many times the need for degrowth. Stop climbing, start moving back down. A world which could control its impulses, its desires, a world which could do away with capitalism and the need for growth, could do away with an economic system in which success is measured by year over year, increases in growth. If we had a world in which, hey, maybe we do discover nuclear fusion, but we can control how much we use, just because we have it, doesn't mean we need to use it to its maximum. A world in which sustainability meant not just in fossil fuel emissions, but sustainability in everything. Maybe there's a universe that exists in our multiple universes,

22:02maybe one out of a trillion in which society takes that trajectory. And we live in abundance, our population reduces over time as we have less children, and we come back into balance. I don't think there's any easy way to get there. It would still require a collapse of some sort, a rough and tumble fall to that point. But that's a world worth dreaming of, fighting for, and that's what we're going to talk about tomorrow. To answer today's question, it requires more than renewables to get there. All right, thanks for being here. See you tomorrow. Hey, Corey here. If you are listening to the back catalog of breaking down collapse, thank you. Those episodes are so vital. They're so important. But I also wanted to let you know that I am now doing daily episodes. Yes, that's right. Here on the podcast, daily episodes. So if you are enjoying the back catalog, great, please also feel free to zoom forward to the most recent episodes. Catch us daily. They are quick little episodes. And I think you'll enjoy them.

23:02Thanks.