energy transition

The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives

by Ernest Scheyder  · 30 Jan 2024  · 355pp  · 133,726 words

its discoverer, the plant was given the moniker Eriogonum tiehmii, or Tiehm’s buckwheat. A small plant, Tiehm’s buckwheat looms large in the green energy transition. Beneath the roots of the plant that Tiehm first discovered that warm spring day sits a massive deposit of lithium, which is used to make

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place, fueling global interest in the building blocks needed to go green. As this transition began to unfold, I was reporting for Reuters about another energy transition—the U.S. shale revolution. For more than six years I had tracked the technology, the money, and the people reviving the American oil and

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jumped at the chance to write about the metals that were set to undergird the green energy revolution. I had already reported on one major energy transition; here was a chance to cover a second one, and one that held the potential of making more of the world not only energy independent

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near term are, paradoxically, necessary to battle climate change in the long term. Recycling alone cannot provide the materials needed to fuel the global green energy transition.64 Before its very eyes, the United States is watching its petroleum dependence on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries transition into a dependence

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farming techniques and disrespected natural processes, Ghosh argues, the seeds of the climate crisis were planted.65 Extrapolating Ghosh’s core argument for the green energy transition requires grappling with where, how, and why each nation procures its own green energy building blocks, and that there likely will not be an equitable

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green energy transition unless the globe reckons with how the climate crisis began. “We throw around these words ‘energy transition’ and ‘the future of energy’ and ‘climate action,’ but basically what we’re doing right now

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the land. * * * THE AMBITIOUS TARGETS set forth by the Paris Climate Accords are impossible without copper given its widespread use in nearly every single green energy transition device. Even before the discovery of electricity, the red metal was ubiquitous. For nearly five thousand years, copper was the only metal known to humanity

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more of the red metal. “People who say that there’s enough copper supply out there are not taking into account the scale of the energy transition,” said Dan Yergin, the famed energy historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning author. “Without some give, you’re not going to be able to achieve

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bring transparency to an industry that had historically been myopic at best and duplicitous at worst. And the standards were launching just as the green energy transition was taking off. * * * IRMA REVIEWS ARE funded by mining companies, who hire independent, IRMA-approved consultants to visit mine sites and contrast what’s

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while also giving automakers and other manufacturers a sense of relief that they were buying ethically sourced lithium, copper, and other metals for the green energy transition. IRMA was certainly a transparency tool. What it didn’t do was make a decision for regulators or everyday consumers. They would have to take

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Ford wanted to buy lithium only from IRMA-audited mines, there just weren’t that many and certainly not enough to fuel the entire green energy transition. “There’s not enough of that volume in IRMA-audited mines. We are getting there, but we’re not there yet,” Boulanger said. For

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using environmentally safe practices? Those questions are increasingly being asked for the manufacturing process of electric vehicles, but given the widespread implications for the green energy transition, EVs were just the tip of the iceberg. Everything, it increasingly seems, is going electric, so the sourcing of these metals matters, and some

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been reciting for more than fifty years: northern Minnesota is no place for a copper mine. “We don’t deny the reality of the green energy transition. But we would have to sacrifice everything we hold dear to have a mine here,” she told me.1 “There is only one place

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s vice president and was well regarded in conservation circles, had been expected to continue in that vein.31 But the necessities of the green energy transition seemed to be a positive harbinger for the mining industry. Indeed, Wall Street projected that a Biden victory would spark a multiyear boon for copper

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to spend all afternoon with you people.” California’s Mountain Pass, a mine that held so much promise for America’s role in the green energy transition, had a new owner. “We are adjourned,” the judge said, less than forty minutes after the proceedings had started. A consortium led by a

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Thacker Pass in almost religious terms and labeled it the prime example of the tension facing the United States and the world amid the green energy transition. Bill McKibben, the famed environmentalist, called it a “fascinating controversy” in a piece for The New Yorker.35 “Blowing up a mountain isn’t

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not completely dead, had suffered a blow due to an unlikely addition to the nation’s internal battle over electric vehicles, mining, and the green energy transition.54 * * * AS THE SUN moved through the sky and began its downward march to the horizon, Wilbert asked if I wanted to hike around

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breaking vote. If Cortez Masto lost, the Democrats could lose the Senate. The senator had long fought to show she was receptive to the green energy transition, going so far as to secure provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure deal passed in 2021 that helped fund U.S. production of EV batteries and

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not ingratiate itself with the local community and regulators. Importantly, the name also fixated on a metal—gold—that was not essential for the green energy transition. Evoking Idaho’s state motto, Midas became Perpetua Resources in February of that year, moved its headquarters to Boise, and listed its stock on

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was effectively cloaking its gold plans behind the green energy veneer of antimony, a tactical response to the Biden administration’s focus on the green energy transition. “We have been planning on antimony being a part of this project forever. It just happens to be that we, all of a sudden,

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changed when she pivoted the company’s message to one focused on helping to clean up this old site and produce metals for the green energy transition. In addition to its use in weapons, antimony was being used to make the glass used in solar panels and cell phones; to coat

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Apache’s opposition to Resolution, many Indigenous leaders across North America and, indeed, the world have slowly warmed to their communities’ role in the green energy transition. It’s a strategy that implicitly is centered on the power that comes from being at the table, from knowing that traditional tribal lands often

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at risk, the Industrial Revolution did not serve them well, and now you’re asking them to participate in a positive way in the green energy transition by mining their land. You’ll of course have a conflict there unless you come up with an equitable solution that works for everyone,” Aimee

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. I asked Lyon about the tension spreading across the United States, about where and how the country hoped to procure strategic minerals for the green energy transition. She acknowledged that, yes, some places in the country probably were too special to mine. Why dig up a religious site? Or a major

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sell the stock, no matter how high (or, implicitly, low) it went.34 Interestingly, the announcement of the stock conversion did not mention the green energy transition, even though by 2020 it was well under way. Antimony was listed as a mineral “essential to the economic and national security of the U

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from building a needed access road.69 The people of Alaska had spoken. A major deposit of copper, a metal that will define the green energy transition, would not be developed. * * * DRIVING ON THE dirt back roads of northern Idaho, the sheer remoteness of this once abandoned mine struck home to

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trade-offs of the clean energy revolution. “If we’re going to let Tiehm’s buckwheat go extinct, then the next fifty years of the energy transition look extremely dark. If it does, then it’s going to leave me thinking a lot. It would force me to ask, What does

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the world.” News outlets across the globe had chronicled the fight, underscoring the stark choice facing the United States and the globe amid the clean energy transition. “It’s really highlighted and put me in the center of this debate around how to make clean energy truly clean. And so now I

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Warren, along with hundreds of their neighbors, started pushing back, saying they were determined not to let their bucolic paradise fall victim to the green energy transition. * * * I FIRST MET Sonya and Warren on a muggy July day in 2021. My cell phone had no signal, and Warren had warned me

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prospects. The company’s board of directors noted, rightly, that while gold has lasting intrinsic value, it held little direct purpose for the coming green energy transition. Governments across the globe were inching their nations away from fossil fuels and into renewable energy projects that would need more practical metals, including lithium

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several county commissioners tore into Piedmont for waiting so long to share its plans, a delay that seemed to imply the company believed the green energy transition would give the company carte blanche to do whatever it wanted. Phillips apologized and promised to be more communicative, but the well had already been

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that would destroy a religious and cultural site, the sales agreement showed the San Carlos Apache tribe was not opposed to copper or the green energy transition as a matter of policy. And building a new mine is, as we’ve seen, increasingly anathema to many. After talking to Rambler, I

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2023 the country produced only small amounts of the metal. That became a problem for the United States, especially amid the rise of the green energy transition, for cobalt is used prominently in EV batteries to ensure they do not overheat and catch fire.56 The metal also helps extend the life

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and other Freeport executives visited universities, trying to convince students to change their majors to mining engineering.67 Despite copper’s role in the green energy transition, it seemed few young people in the West wanted to help procure it. “I would like to see more people want to come work

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potentiality. The risk of explosion in a battery-recycling facility is far greater than just bringing an iPhone on an airplane. Even still, the green energy transition is fueled by a growing realization that more metals are needed to combat climate change, a reality that even mining companies seem to agree with

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and producing the metals.25 Business models for lithium-ion battery recycling had yet to be set up in the early days of the green energy transition, although there were certainly plenty of successful examples to use as North Stars. Coors, the iconic beer company, launched the first aluminum beverage can

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major would have led to a career in the oil or natural gas industry, but when Kochhar enrolled in 2009 the seeds of the green energy transition had been planted. He got an offer from Hatch when he graduated in 2013 to join the “non-ferrous off-gas handling” division, which,

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to be a godsend for Li-Cycle, Kochhar, and Johnston. By forcing the world to contend with long supply chains for everyday goods, the green energy transition was pushed into overdrive. The same forces that encouraged the United States and other Western nations to consider more mining also encouraged growth in recycling

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just as the United States and other nations are having to grapple with the need to mine more of their own metals for the green energy transition, so, too, are they having to contend with the need to recycle more of their own batteries. That reality had been underscored by late

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billion by 2030.59 Traditional sources of lithium and other metals were put on notice. Yes, new mines would be needed to supply the green energy transition’s initial phases. But recycling will eventually supply a larger percentage of the metals needed to build more batteries. “All of those materials we put

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amount of a metal that can be technically recovered. Even still, having the world’s largest lithium resource gives Bolivia enormous power in the green energy transition. By 2018, that lithium had entranced an American startup firm, which boasted it had the best technology to help Bolivia mass-produce the metal for

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batteries is because it’s in the name. You need lithium!” To impress upon his team the role he saw for his company in this energy transition, Egan had given each employee a copy of Edmund Morris’s biography of Thomas Edison and, as part of a monthly book club, quizzed

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federal agencies about the flower and its designation as an endangered species. He described ioneer’s plans as a major step forward for the green energy transition and one that could produce lithium in what he called an environmentally responsible way.4 The optics also mattered. Shah chose to lend money to

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Biden administration said they did not think it incongruous that they were blocking the Twin Metals project while at the same time heralding the green energy transition. “The department sees the value in critical minerals and their critical importance to the future of this country,” an administration official said. Pete Stauber,

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world, the spirit of life.”25 Meanwhile, a small company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, was promising to supply copper and nickel for the green energy transition without ever digging a hole in the ground. The Metals Co. aimed to vacuum mineral-rich, potato-sized nodules off the floor of the Pacific

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the frequencies at which cetaceans communicate,” according to a peer-reviewed study.26 Despite attempts to find alternate ways to produce metals for the green energy transition, there was no way around the fact that mining is loud, dangerous, and disruptive and will remain so for the foreseeable future, a reality

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go, I will go. And where you stay, I will stay.” ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ernest Scheyder is a senior correspondent for Reuters covering the green energy transition and the minerals that undergird it. He previously covered the U.S. shale oil revolution, politics, and the environment, and held roles at the Associated

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’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis (London: John Murray, 2022). 66. Amos Hochstein, “Securing the Energy Transition,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 29, 2021, www.csis.org/analysis/securing-energy-transition. 67. “The USA Hosts 24% of Global Lithium Resources but Benchmark Forecasts It Will Only Produce 3% of

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“Copper in the USA: Bright Future—Glorious Past.” 15. Dan Yergin et al., “The Future of Copper: Will the Looming Supply Gap Short-Circuit the Energy Transition?” S&P Global, official website, July 2022, cdn.ihsmarkit.com/www/pdf/1022/The-Future-of-Copper_Full-Report_SPGlobal.pdf, 9. 16. Ernest Scheyder

The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth

by Nicolas Niarchos  · 20 Jan 2026  · 654pp  · 170,150 words

of mining another metal: In Congo, it comes with copper, but elsewhere, like in Indonesia and Australia, it is bound to nickel ore. As the energy transition ramped up, the demand for such metals exploded. Many electric vehicles also use cobalt in their batteries. A 2021 analysis by Jon Lynch of the

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to build them also gobbles up massive amounts of metals and energy. “Copper is the metal of electrification, and electrification is much of what the energy transition is all about,” Daniel Yergin, the vice-chairman of the financial analytics firm S&P Global, told CNBC in mid-2022. Much the same could

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-role-in-electric-vehicle-production.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Copper is the metal”: Pippa Stevens, “A Coming Copper Shortage Could Derail the Energy Transition, Report Finds,” CNBC, July 14, 2022, cnbc.com/2022/07/14/copper-is-key-to-electric-vehicles-wind-and-solar-power-were-short-supply.html

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IN TEXT Chapter 35: Dirty Nickel Primarily for nickel: Henry Sanderson, “Nickel Drama Highlights Tsingshan’s Role in Energy Transition,” Dialogue Earth, May 13, 2022, chinadialogue.net/en/business/nickel-drama-highlights-tsingshans-role-in-energy-transition/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT a total of $29 billion: Erwida Maulia, “Dirty Metals for Clean

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et al., “Phospho-Olivines as Positive-Electrode Materials for Rechargeable Lithium Batteries,” 1188. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT LFP cathodes represented: Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions (International Energy Agency, 2024), iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/cb39c1bf-d2b3-446d-8c35-aae6b1f3a4a0/BatteriesandSecureEnergyTransitions.pdf. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT low cost

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

by Paul Kingsnorth  · 23 Sep 2025  · 388pp  · 110,920 words

Books, 1987), 72. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2 Mumford, City in History, 75. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3 ‘Empowering Urban Energy Transitions’, International Energy Agency, https://www.iea.org/reports/empowering-urban-energy-transitions/executive-summary. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4 Nita Bhalla, ‘World’s Slum Populations Set to Surge as Housing Crisis Bites

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

by Greta Thunberg  · 14 Feb 2023  · 651pp  · 162,060 words

and stuff them with ever more junk, then we’ll still use up the world’s farms and forests, still kill off its animals. An energy transition may be our most immediate crisis, but it’s far from the only peril we face. Still, we shouldn’t underestimate the potential of this

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the nightmare of economists, the climate system does not allow us the time to find the perfect policy solution that is acceptable to all. The energy transition is also going to inflict pain on some while bringing rewards to others. This is unavoidable, but the world is full of examples of these

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that seek to hold on to the fading past. It is incumbent on governments to protect and help those who are collateral damage in the energy transition, for example coal miners, but not those that choose to impede it, like some powerful corporations. The amount of time available to make the

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energy transition is vanishing. To achieve it, we need all the tools in the toolbox. Technology alone is unlikely to solve the problem, and technologies also come

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. The cost of renewable energy is still beyond the affordability of the poor in the world; those in power must not preach the need for energy transitions but instead pay for them to happen. This is where the discussions on the use of markets, through instruments like emissions trading, should be put

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, the reform was accepted when the government decided to use the revenue to fund universal health insurance and support for the poorest. To accelerate the energy transition, we must also think outside the box. Consider, for example, a progressive tax on wealth, with a pollution top-up. This would accelerate the shift

What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures

by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson  · 17 Sep 2024  · 588pp  · 160,825 words

$4 in benefits. + Getting to net zero is a more than $12 trillion business opportunity. In 2023, $1.8 trillion was invested in the clean energy transition, a new record. + Due to the favorable economics of renewables, decarbonizing the energy system by 2050 could save up to $15 trillion. + In 2023, for

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, take them to court. Use both carrots and sticks—incentives and loans, plus taxes and fines. Tax incentives, grants, and federal loans will supercharge an energy transition. The funding in the Inflation Reduction Act was a great start. In the state of Georgia, billion-dollar investments in green industries have led to

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kids way out in Brooklyn have access to the same nutritional food as those who live in the middle of the city. I imagine an energy transition. Twenty or thirty years from now, New York City is a place that is livable and sustainable. Our metropolitan and transit systems are much more

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and climate justice. Overall, we need more small-“d” democracy that allows for more public engagement and community control over both how decarbonization and the energy transition are happening, and more generally around public policy. We’ve seen such an erosion of trust in our institutions and in some ways in civic

Investing to Save the Planet: How Your Money Can Make a Difference

by Alice Ross  · 19 Nov 2020  · 197pp  · 53,831 words

climate change. In short, however one may feel about whether billionaires should be allowed to exist, they do have a role to play in the energy transition. While a lot of old-school billionaires have contributed to climate change and still lobby in favour of the polluting activities that made them rich

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companies are trying to move away from coal, oil and gas towards renewable energy sources like solar and wind, in what is known as the energy transition. There are plenty of emerging technologies here that you could use your money to support – or you could choose to invest in companies that are

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I must say that my interest in climate change has got much more serious,’ he says. ‘There’s no question that we are in an energy transition and we are going to be decarbonising the global economy, so companies looking in that field are obviously investing in the grain.’ Pensions The reality

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most polluting companies plus 61 others that are systemically important in some other way, for example by having a key role to play in the energy transition process. A 2019 report from the group listed some of its achievements in the form of climate change promises that various of the 100+ companies

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involved with the Climate Action 100+ initiative put pressure on them, that could help to speed up the energy transition. Some people argue that it could even be damaging, at this early stage of the energy transition, to dump fossil fuel stocks altogether. A January 2020 report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch warned

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that as energy companies had already been a frequent target of divestments, a key risk for the energy transition was that there wouldn’t be enough capital investment in the sector in the years ahead to sufficiently support a seamless transition to a low

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important – and none more so than in energy. The case for energy when it comes to investing to save the planet is all about the energy transition. Existing energy companies need to transition from relying on oil and gas to renewable sources or they may not survive. New technologies need to be

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companies in transition, a huge theme across sectors, as we’ve seen already. The world has shifted its energy use on a large scale before. Energy transition is not a new concept. In the nineteenth century, the world shifted from biomass and wood to coal, while the twentieth century saw a shift

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, according to a 2018 report from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. The report concluded that the global energy industry was verging on its next energy transition, with wind and solar likely to be the fuel of the twenty-first century. The transition could be at a much faster pace, due to

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the pressure of regulation, in contrast to previous transition periods, which were more opportunistic. But historical examples have both fast and slow energy transition periods, making the pace this time around a critical uncertainty. Still, everyone recognises that if we are going to meet the Paris commitments, the world

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now has to undergo its third energy transition: from coal, oil and gas to renewable energy. The challenge is how to achieve this quickly enough. The latest annual report on world energy from

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. This prompted hopes that energy emissions might have peaked. The head of the IEA, Fatih Birol, told the Financial Times in February 2020: ‘The clean energy transition is starting to accelerate very strongly. This makes me hopeful we are seeing a peak in emissions and they will now start to decline.’ He

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would fall by nearly 8 per cent in 2020, reaching their lowest level since 2010. ‘No oil and gas company will be unaffected by clean energy transitions, so every part of the industry needs to consider how to respond,’ the IEA said in its 2020 report. In April, noting the huge impact

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that emerges from this crisis will be significantly different from the one that came before.’ What will not change, however, is the need for the energy transition. Dr Birol wrote in March that ‘We should not allow today’s crisis to compromise our efforts to tackle the world’s inescapable challenge.’ Some

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and development activity. But the IEA said that a ‘much more significant change’ in how these companies allocated their cash would be required to accelerate energy transitions. The transformation of the energy sector can happen without the oil and gas industry, the IEA argues, but it would be more difficult and more

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return below what they’d get elsewhere, while others aim to get just as good a return as they would in a normal investment. The energy transition and cleantech has attracted various impact investors, many of whom are individuals representing their families or family offices. Nicole Systrom (who also happens to be

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for the early-stage investors. Oil and gas companies, for example, are getting in on the action as part of their plans to embrace the energy transition. Chargemaster, a supplier of infrastructure for electric vehicle charging, was snapped up by BP in 2018 and installs charging points for local authorities across the

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portfolio? Or do you want to reward those making efforts to cut their emissions, to invest in renewables and to help the world during its energy transition? Are you one of the wealthy individuals who want to back the next big thing in climate change tech, be it lab-grown meat, electric

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-risk investors 126; medium-risk investors 126; primary energy consumption 111–12; renewable energy investment, history of 113–14; transitioning away from oil and gas/energy transition 19, 21, 39, 76, 84, 110–13, 123, 140, 194 energy efficiency, investing in 22, 33, 110, 161, 163–79, 183, 203; building and construction

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, 116, 126, 186; oil prices 55, 56, 138, 189, 197; public shaming of 60; scope 3 emissions and 185, 186; subsidies 182; transitioning away from/energy transition 19, 21, 36, 39, 76, 84, 107–20, 123; value traps 59 Olympics (2020) 137 ON Semiconductor 166, 167 Oppenheim, Jeremy 63–5, 93, 142

Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future

by Robert Bryce  · 26 Apr 2011  · 520pp  · 129,887 words

the twenty-first century and require trillions of dollars in new investment. So, given the Four Imperatives and the stark realities posed by the long energy transition that lies ahead, what are we to do? FIGURE 1 Annual U.S. Energy Production: Comparing Wind and Solar with Other Energy Sources Sources: Energy

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does that we all agree that moving to something else—anything else—is a really good idea. We must, we’re told, make a hurried energy transition, because:• The United States should be “energy independent.” Doing so will free us from the vagaries of the world energy market and increase employment here

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quickly, cheaply, and easily. That. Is. Not. True. Tomorrow’s energy sources will look a lot like today’s, because energy transitions are always difficult and lengthy. “There is one thing all energy transitions have in common: they are prolonged affairs that take decades to accomplish,” wrote Vaclav Smil in November 2008. “And the

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“world without fossil fuel combustion is highly desirable ... getting there will demand not only high cost but also considerable patience: coming energy transitions will unfold across decades, not years.”24 Indeed, energy transitions unfold slowly and are always under way whether we recognize them or not. Between 1973 and 2008, the amount of electricity

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available. The $5-trillion-per-year global energy business dwarfs all other sectors of the economy.25 Given its size, and given that any major energy transition will take decades, we must carefully analyze the various energy sources to determine which ones can satisfy the Four Imperatives: power density, energy density, cost

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like sex and Internet bandwidth: The more we get, the more we want. And that’s one of the biggest problems when it comes to energy transitions. We have invested trillions of dollars in the pipelines, wires, storage tanks, and electricity-generation plants that are providing us with the watts that we

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will gradually begin moving toward other forms of energy. But that move will be just that: gradual. And for those who doubt just how lengthy energy transitions can be, history offers some illuminating examples. Power Equivalencies of Various Engines, Motors, and Appliances, in Horsepower (and Watts) Saturn V rocket: 160,000,000

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: 0.03 (25 W)40 Recharging an Apple iPhone: 0.0013 (1 W)41 CHAPTER 4 Wood to Coal to Oil The Slow Pace of Energy Transitions GIVEN OUR CURRENT OBSESSION with Big Oil and Big Coal, it’s worth noting that the fuel source that has had the longest reign in

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percent. And over the coming decades, the percentage will likely continue its slow decline. It is true that this decline is part of a significant energy transition; it’s just not the rapid move to the “green” sources that Al Gore and many other boosters have been hyping. The big challenge for

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energy in the country.8 By the late 1950s, gas looked ready to rob even greater market share away from coal. But just as that energy transition was beginning, natural gas became a favored target for federal regulators. And the hodgepodge of regulations that resulted would hamstring the U.S. gas industry

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/2009/10/us-geothermal-capacity-could-top-10-gw. 9 Arnulf Grübler, “Transitions in Energy Use,” Encyclopedia of Earth, 2008, http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_transitions, 163. 10 Energy-density metrics for area are uncommon. 11 John Pearley Huffman, “Generations,” May 8, 2003, http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId

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. 15 Richard T. Cooper, “Carter Seeks Emergency Natural Gas Deregulation,” Los Angeles Times, January 26, 1977, B1. 16 Robert A. Hefner III, The GET: Grand Energy Transition (Oklahoma City: Hefner Foundation, 2008), 35. 17 Lawrence Goodwyn, Texas Oil, American Dreams: A Study of the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association (Austin

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Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies (Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society, 2003), 105. 13 Robert A. Hefner III, The GET: Grand Energy Transition (Oklahoma City: Hefner Foundation, 2008), 37–40. 14 Goodwyn, Texas Oil, American Dreams, 36. 15 Hunt Oil, “Hunt Oil History Window,” n.d., http://www

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C. The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won’t Run the World. Pueblo, CO: Vales Lake Publishing, 2001. Hefner, Robert A., III. The GET: Grand Energy Transition. Oklahoma City: Hefner Foundation, 2008. Heinberg, Richard. The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society

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Policy Act (2005) Energy posers Energy poverty Energy production, environmental costs of Energy sprawl Energy storage, and renewables “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” (Lovin) Energy transitions Energy unease, main causes of. See Fear; Guilt; Ignorance Energy-intensive businesses Engineers Engines(photo) England Eni Enron Environmental costs. See under specific type of

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger  · 28 Jun 2020

, LPG, and gasoline, which must be made from primary energies.) Throughout the next summer, Marchetti and a colleague inputted data from three hundred cases of energy transitions from around the world. The transitions were from wood to coal, whale oil to petroleum, coal to oil, and many other combinations. “I could not

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added, “The whole destiny of an energy source seems to be completely predetermined in the first childhood.”45 The study of what we today call energy transitions was born. Wars, big changes in energy prices, and even depressions, Marchetti found, had no effect on the rate of

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energy transition. “It is as though the system had a schedule, a will, and a clock,” he wrote.46 Older histories emphasized the role of scarcity in

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of energy around World War I, even though “coal reserves were in a sense infinite” as oil and natural gas started to replace it.50 Energy transitions have occurred in the way that Marchetti predicted, from more energy-dilute and carbon-dense fuels toward more energy-dense and hydrogen-dense ones. Just

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rather, its main component, methane, has four hydrogen atoms to one carbon atom, hence its molecular expression as CH4.52 As a consequence of these energy transitions, the carbon-intensity of energy has declined for more than 150 years. Between 1860 and the mid-1990s, the carbon intensity of primary global energy

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tend to move from energy-dilute to energy-dense fuels, but wrong that “the system had a schedule . . . and a clock.” While the direction of energy transitions he predicted was broadly correct, Marchetti’s timing was off. For example, in the United States, the share of electricity coming from coal declined from

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wildlife, insects, and humans. Dust that blows into the air from such operations can harm miners and people who live in nearby communities.73 No energy transition occurs without human and environmental impacts. Fracking brings pipelines, rigs, and trucks, which can disrupt peaceful landscapes that people rightly care about. Frackers have created

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didn’t foresee was how powerful and important opposition to the new technology, particularly from upper classes of society, could be in the case of energy transitions. 7. Fish Go Wild In late 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a genetically modified salmon, one that delivered major environmental benefits

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understood the immense indifference of nature,” said Ausubel, “and a lot of the human enterprise.” I asked Ausubel why he thought Marchetti’s model of energy transitions had been so off in terms of timing, even if it was broadly accurate on the direction. “You can look at the long term and

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abroad.”100 The moral of the story is that economic growth and the rising demand for food, lighting, and energy drive product and energy transitions, but politics can constrain them. Energy transitions depend on people wanting them. When it comes to protecting the environment by moving to superior alternatives, public attitudes and political action

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nation has done more to support renewables than Germany. For the last twenty years it has been going through what it calls an Energiewende, or energy transition, from nuclear and fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. It will have spent $580 billion on renewables and related infrastructure by 2025, according to energy

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physical demands of renewables thus spark local environmental opposition around the world. Of the 7,700 new kilometers of transmission lines Germany needed for the energy transition, only 8 percent have been built; in 2019, the deployment of renewables and related transmission lines slowed rapidly.45 As goes Germany so may go

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we have seen, for some advocates of renewables, that has always been the goal. In its 2019 exposé, Der Spiegel concludes that Germany’s renewable energy transition was just done incorrectly,91 but that’s misleading. The transition to renewables was doomed because modern industrial people, no matter how romantic they are

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war to ending racial discrimination. The author of the summary, which Oreskes and Conway claim “sided with the economists,” was Jesse Ausubel, the expert in energy transitions who worked with Cesare Marchetti in the 1970s at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna. Ausubel also coauthored an article with Yale

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-power-must-be-part-of-the-energy-solution. 97. R.B. Allen, “Backward into the future: The shift to coal and implications for the next energy transition,” Energy Policy 50 (2012): 17–23, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.03.020. 98. Jesse Ausubel (environmental scientist) in conversation with the

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conversion between Germany and USA made using OECD data for Purchasing Power Parity. 41. Fridolin Pflugmann, Ingmar Ritzenhofen, Fabian Stockhausen, and Thomas Vahlenkamp, “Germany’s Energy Transition at a Crossroads,” McKinsey & Company, November 2019, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/germanys

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-energy-transition-at-a-crossroads. 42. “Electricity Prices for Household Consumers—Bi-annual Data (from 2007 Onwards),” Eurostat, December 1, 2019, https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/

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Bat,” Biological Conservation 209 (May 2017): 172–77, http://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2017.02.023. 132. Fridolin Pflugmann et al., “Germany’s energy transition at a crossroads,” McKinsey & Company, November 2019, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/germanys

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-energy-transition-at-a-crossroads. 133. Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation Air Quality and Climate Division, Vermont Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory Update: Brief 1990–2015, June 2018,

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), 218–19 Energy efficiency, 98–99, 154, 165, 166, 167–68 Energy leapfrogging, 97–98, 224, 226–29, 248, 249 Energy subsidies, 145–46, 153 Energy transitions, 114–16, 120, 123–24, 125 Engels, Friedrich, 235 Enlightenment, 230, 265 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (Godwin), 229–30, 231 Enron, 205 Environmental alarmism. See

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made

by Vaclav Smil  · 2 Mar 2021  · 1,324pp  · 159,290 words

in Agriculture, Feeding the World, Harvesting the Biosphere, Should We Eat Meat?); energy resources and uses (Energy at the Crossroads, Energy in Nature and Society, Energy Transitions, Energy and Civilization); key technical and material inputs of modern economies (Creating the Twentieth Century, Transforming the Twentieth Century, Making the Modern World, Still the

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animal feeding, resulting in higher levels of per capita meat, eggs, and dairy-animal food supply (and, regrettably, also in higher rates of food waste). Energy transitions All premodern societies were also constrained by energy supply. Pre-transition societies were energized in ways that remained unchanged for millennia. Human and animal muscles

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even less efficient, and only a tiny share of chemical energy in wax and oil (candles and lamps) was converted to light. Early stages of energy transitions reduced phytomass fuels to minor shares of primary energy as fossil fuels, starting with coal and progressing to crude oil and natural gas, came to

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to support (few exceptions aside) cities of limited size. Economic transitions transformed the contribution of major sectors. These shifts were driven by demographic, agricultural, and energy transitions, with the key advances in cropping, fuel, and electricity use based on innovations arising from new scientific inquiries based on systematic experiments and on investigation

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only by several generations but also by as much as hundreds of years. Perhaps the most notable example of an early start is the English energy transition. In England and Wales coal combustion surpassed wood burning no later than by 1620. By that time, all major coal-mining regions that energized the

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and they ran most of their course in remarkably short periods of time. Economic development of post-Mao China—enabled by concurrent population, agricultural, and energy transitions (and accelerated by mass transfer of advanced foreign know-how that was also supplemented by large-scale theft of intellectual property)—is an unrivaled example

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transition that allowed the rural labor surpluses to migrate to cities. The cities could not have sustained high rates of growth without both agricultural and energy transitions that were able to supply food, thanks first to railways and then to new global markets for crops and meat (including refrigerated shipments since the

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force for rural emigration and that provided new and affordable inputs of machines, devices, and processes needed to sustain and to expand both agricultural and energy transitions. The expanding reach of cities beyond their immediate hinterlands and their demand for food, energy, and materials had eventually extended worldwide, and urban areas became

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—and eating store-bought white bread (including the energy cost of milling, baking, and distribution) would easily double that need. Several studies have traced agricultural energy transitions on national or regional scales (Gingrich et al. 2018). Depending on the agroecosystem, external energy subsidies have risen by one to two orders of magnitude

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product and of per capita incomes) will be detailed in the next chapter. In this chapter I will focus on the three principal components of energy transitions: the rapid shift from phytomass to fossil fuels and from animate to inanimate prime movers; the electrification of modern societies (an even more transformative development

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variety of energy uses. These shifts have been accompanied by impressively improving conversion efficiencies and declining energy intensities—but we still produce too much waste. Energy Transitions Once again, there is strong contrast between the stagnation and only a very slow rate of improvements during the millennia preceding industrialization and rapid changes

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power (de Zeeuw 1978; Unger 1984). But once the best peat deposits had been largely exhausted the country turned to coal. Accomplishments of this first energy transition are best appreciated by understanding low per capita use of wood in traditional societies. By 1800 average per capita supply of fuelwood was just 7

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of coal’s peak share reached in the early years of the 20th century (again, when we count only commercial energies). Figure 4.3 Global energy transitions, 1800–2015. Based on Smil (2017b). In the wake of the OPEC-driven quintupling of oil prices in 1973 and 1974 and their further nearly

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growth, with 8.2 billion passengers carried by 2037 compared to 4 billion transported in 2017. Prime movers: From animate to inanimate power Studies of energy transition focus on fuels but that is an incomplete perspective, as the epochal shift to fossil fuels was largely driven by the invention and diffusion of

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,000 km, the factor (assuming the mean speed of 60 km/h) is merely 4%. Perhaps the best way to appreciate the outcomes of this energy transition is to compare typical or modal power ratings, power/mass ratios, efficiency, reliability, and durability. Animate prime movers are inherently limited by the size of

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operating hours (an equivalent of flying nonstop for nearly 11.5 years), and with regular overhauls they can last more than two decades. Fundamental changes Energy transition has brought four fundamental changes. First, it moved the global system away from the reliance on recently photosynthesized phytomass (aged just 3–5 months for

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cars capable of traveling 500 km on a single fuel charge are impossible; wood-fired intercontinental airplanes are unthinkable. The fourth fundamental shift brought by energy transition has been the increase in power density of fuels measured per unit of the Earth’s surface (Smil 2015b; Figure 4.7). All phytomass fuels

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may eventually surpass 50 W/m2. That our energy future will be even more electric comes as no surprise, given the post-1882 trajectory of energy transitions. Electrification The first fundamental electrical experiments and the first practical designs of electricity-powered devices came during the first half of the 19th century (Smil

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motors offer the most flexible, most affordable, and most reliable choice to energize countless industrial, household, and transportation tasks. Electricity’s importance If the grand energy transition had been limited to displacing phytomass by fossil fuels we still would have more convenient and more efficient space heating, better sources of energy for

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to account for increasing efficiencies of energy conversions. Published comparisons generally neglect to do that but this efficiency gain has been a fundamental part of energy transitions as increasing efficiencies of every kind of energy conversion have been reflected in declining intensities of energy use and helped to reduce environmental impacts. Efficiencies

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expectations regarding this transition have assumed that it could be accomplished in relatively short time. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the very nature of energy transitions: they always take decades to unfold. 5 Economies An array of economic contrasts between pre-transition societies and modern affluent states is far too large

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output, profound structural shifts, and the arrival of mass-scale consumption of products and experiences—became clearly and widely discernible only as population, dietary, and energy transitions combined with technical innovations and with better modes of governance to start a new era of unprecedented economic advances. End points or asymptotic levels indicating

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the completion of demographic, dietary, and energy transitions are either self-evident or can be well defined. There can be no doubt that a society has completed its demographic transition once its fertility

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food has greatly surpassed even the highest conceivable nutritional requirements and has generated an unacceptably high level of waste; and that it has accomplished its energy transition when it consumes no traditional phytomass fuels and relies solely on a mixture of fossil fuels and primary electricity consumed at high per capita rates

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the COVID-19-driven decline of CO2 emissions will be negligible (Forster et al. 2020), and even if the pandemic experience were to accelerate the energy transition in affluent countries it will not have a similar effect in today’s low-energy economies. During the first two decades of the 21st century

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, and the Future is Electric Scenario would require a further increase equivalent to combined 2017 consumption in China and India (IEA 2018b). Second, large-scale energy transitions have been always gradual, prolonged affairs unfolding across generations, and the shift from fossil carbon to non-carbon energies will be no exception (Smil 2017b

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energies was just 2.2% of the global primary energy. Third, the shift toward renewable electricity generation is (relatively) the easiest part of the global energy transition, but while some countries now generate large shares of their demand from wind and solar PV, achieving a completely carbon-free electricity supply is a

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514:486–488. Chenery, H.B. 1960. Patterns of industrial growth. The American Economic Review 50:624–654. Cherif, R. et al. 2017. Riding the Energy Transition: Beyond Oil. Washington, DC: IMF. Chesnais, J.C. 1992. The Demographic Transition: Stages, Patterns, and Economic Implications. Oxford: Clarendon Pres. Chittenden, R.H. 1907. The

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1990. In: Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-born Population of the United States: 1850–1990. Washington, DC: USBC. Gingrich, S. et al. 2018. Agroecosystem energy transitions in the old and new worlds: Trajectories and determinants at the regional scale. Regional Environmental Change 19:1089–1101. Glaeser, E.L., ed. 2010. Agglomeration

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. 2016a. Still the Iron Age. Oxford: Elsevier. Smil, V. 2016b. Embodied energy: Mobile devices and cars. IEEE Spectrum May 2016:26. Smil, V. 2016c. Examining energy transitions: A dozen insights based on performance. Energy Research & Social Science 22:194–197. Smil, V. 2017a. Energy and Civilization: A History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

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. Smil, V. 2017b. Energy Transitions. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Smil, V. 2017c. Electric vehicles—Not so fast. IEEE Spectrum December 2017:24. Smil, V. 2018. April 1838: Crossing the Atlantic

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modernization trajectory, 160–61 premodern, lack of economic growth, 155 savings rates, 192 service sector employment, 181, 184 tourism, 196–97 traditional farming, 167 China, energy transitions air conditioners, 142–44 blast furnaces, 119–20 car electrification, 276 coal output and use, 117, 121 compound feeds, use of, 83 electrification, 139, 144

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, 68 modern primary energy supply, fossil fuels in, 277–78 non-carbon system, characteristics of possible transition to, 279 production in premodern world, 2–3 energy transitions, 114–51 electricity, importance of, 136–37 electrification, 135–44, 136f fundamental changes from, 133–35 hydrocarbons, rise of, 120–25 illustration of, 122f introduction

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growth rates, 159–60 industrialization of, 179 premodern, lack of economic growth, 155 sources of economic growth, 160 water usage, 190 England/Britain/United Kingdom, energy transitions animate power in, early 19th century, 126 coal extraction and use, 117, 118–19, 119f energy intensity, 150 mentioned, 16 per capita energy use, 146

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vs. biotic raw materials, flow of, 188 international tourist arrivals, 196 leisure travel, 196 services, deindustrialization and transition to, 185 water usage, 189–90 Europe, energy transitions automobilization, 124 car ownership, 124–25 electric household products, 142 electrification, 139 energy consumption, 146, 273, 287 gas lighting, 138 mechanized field farming, transition to

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force (1870), 174 GDP growth, 161, 166 growth rates, 159–60 households, qualitative aspects of, 190 manufacturing, 176 tourism, 196–97 water usage, 190 France, energy transitions absolute energy consumption rates, 150–51 animate power, early 19th century, 126 coal extraction, 118–19 energy intensity, 150 energy sources, 115–17 per capita

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, flow of, 188 economic growth and development, 161, 162, 166 employment, 153, 179, 184 GDP growth, 161 household debt, 192 wealth distribution, 23–24 India, energy transitions blast furnaces, 119–20 car ownership, 125 electrification, 139 energy generation from coal, 144, 290–91 future primary energy consumption, 273 kerosene lamps, 145 residential

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growth rates, 159–60 happiness rankings, 192–93 industrialization, 179 material flows, 189 savings rates, 192 sources of economic growth, 160 water usage, 190 Japan, energy transitions air conditioners, 142–44 automobilization, 124 electric household products, 142 electrification, 139 energy sources, 117–18 nighttime light, 140–41 per capita energy use, 146

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-Atlantic crossings, 19–20 transformers (electrical), 135 transistors, 199, 200f transportation. See also aircraft; animate prime movers; cars; diesel engines fuels for, 145 possible future energy transition, 276–77 in premodern world, 2 railways, 123, 124, 132, 193 transitions in, 12, 19–20 travel air travel, 20, 194–95, 282 leisure-related

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–97 manufacturing, 175, 176–77 material flows, 188, 189 outbound tourism, 196–97 railways, 193–94 savings rates, 192 services in manufacturing, 178 United States, energy transitions absolute energy consumption rates, 150–51 air conditioners, 142 animate to inanimate energies, tipping point of transition to, 130 biofuels production, 276 car ownership, 124

Energy and Civilization: A History

by Vaclav Smil  · 11 May 2017

during the past 3,000 years (top). Reasonably accurate (except for the consumption of traditional biomass fuels) post-1850 statistics reveal successive waves of slow energy transitions (bottom): by 2010 crude oil was the leading fossil fuel, but coal and natural gas were not far behind. Plotted from data in UNO (1956

…

2005); the widespread use of gas turbines (stationary for electricity generation or powering jetliners and ships) came only after 1960 (Smil 2010a). Recent studies of energy transitions demonstrate many commonalities governing these gradual shifts and identify major factors that have promoted or impeded the process (Malanima 2006; Fouquet 2010; Smil 2010a; Pearson

…

half of a nation’s primary energy supply (Smil 2010a). In England and Wales this took place exceptionally early and the timing of this earliest energy transitions can only be approximated. Warde (2007) concluded that choosing a precise date for the tipping point between wood and coal would be arbitrary, but his

…

difference only a local scale. Despite many renewable options, some rapid advances, and many contradictory claims, the basic verdict is clear: as with all other energy transitions, moving away from fossil fuels will be a protracted process, and we will have to wait to see how different conversions will evolve to claim

…

regional differences at the time of innovation and the widespread adoption of new fuels and prime movers but also because of the evolutionary nature of energy transitions (Melosi 1982; Smil 2010a). Established sources and prime movers can be surprisingly persistent, and new supplies or techniques may become dominant only after long periods

…

during the past 3,000 years (top). Reasonably accurate (except for the consumption of traditional biomass fuels) post-1850 statistics reveal successive waves of slow energy transitions (bottom): by 2010 crude oil was the leading fossil fuel, but coal and natural gas were not far behind. Plotted from data in UNO (1956

…

) and Smil (2010a). My reconstruction of global energy transitions shows coal (replacing wood) reaching 5% of the global market around 1840, 10% by 1855, 15% by 1865, 20% by 1870, 25% by 1875, 33

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, for the right wind to take them into Plymouth Sound (Chatterton 1926). Energy imperatives had a profound influence on national and regional fortunes during modern energy transitions. Countries and locales with a relatively easy access to fuels that could be produced and distributed with less energy than the previously dominant source enjoyed

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. Fouquet, R. 2008. Heat, Power and Light: Revolutions in Energy Services. London: Edward Elgar. Fouquet, R. 2010. The slow search for solutions: Lessons from historical energy transitions by sector and service. Energy Policy 38:6586–6596. Fouquet, R., and P. J. G. Pearson. 2006. Seven centuries of energy services: The price and

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P. C. Salzman, eds. 1981. Change and Development in Nomadic and Pastoral Societies. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Gales, B., et al. 2007. North versus South: Energy transition and energy intensity in Europe over 200 years. European Review of Economic History 2:219–253. Galloway, J. A., D. Keene, and M. Murphy. 1996

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-1977-toronado-tesla-p85d. Maddison Project. 2013. Maddison Project. http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/home.htm. Madureira, N. L. 2012. The iron industry energy transition. Energy Policy 50:24–34. Magee, D. 2005. The John Deere Way: Performance That Endures. New York: Wiley. Mak, S. 2010. Rice Cultivation—The Traditional

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years ago? A new model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103:9381–9386. Melosi, M. V. 1982. Energy transition in the nineteenth-century economy. In Energy and Transport, ed. G. H. Daniels and M. H. Rose, 55–67. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Melville

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. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smil, V. 2008b. Global Catastrophes and Trends. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smil, V. 2008c. Oil. Oxford: Oneworld Press. Smil, V. 2010a. Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Smil, V. 2010b. Prime Movers of Globalization: The History and Impact of Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines. Cambridge

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, 87–89, 91, 93, 99–106, 111–113, 115, 117–119, 122–126 electricity in, 254, 258, 260, 262, 266, 270, 287, 360, 405–406 energy transitions in, 228–244, 314, 316, 389–391, 393–394, 409 energy use in, 302, 348, 358, 395, 420, 426, 432–435 modern energies in, 250

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