A new study published in Nature provides evidence that combining solar and wind energy is now sufficient to supply most of the world’s energy needs between 72% and 91% of the time and between 83% and 94% of the time by using up to twelve hours of storage in the form of batteries. And if countries shared the electricity they produced, then renewable energy production technologies are now advanced enough to power most of the world.
Another blow for the skeptics who claim, without evidence, that renewables, still can’t meet energy demand. COP26 has proved a cop out, despite the public’s demands for a concerted effort to reduce the rate at which the climate is heating up, and instead of committing to a date to stop using fossil fuels — the only decision that really mattered — once again our leaders have kicked the can down the road and so we find ourselves with a terrible paradox: we have technologies capable of solving the most important problem in the history of human civilization, but we refuse to use them.
Governments around the world are not prepared to invest in scaled up renewable infrastructure at full speed, and instead continue subsidizing oil companies to the tune of billions of dollars. While the development of technologies such as offshore wind continues to prove its efficiency in more and more places around the world, most governments are sitting on their hands and talking vaguely about moving away from fossil fuels at some point in the distant future, by which time it will be too late.
At the heart of the problem is the politicization of the climate phenomenon. In countries such as the United States, despite the overwhelming evidence that humanity is responsible for climate change, there are still a large number of Americans, mainly ultra-conservative Republicans, who simply refuse to countenance the idea of any change to their lifestyles, which allows governments to delay taking action for fear of losing votes. And so we will continue to have supposedly popular governments that win elections but do nothing to solve the problem, while extreme weather events become more frequent and the planet continues to destabilize.
When people refuse to accept the evidence, then logic and the common good means the time has come to force them to change by taking measure of a different kind.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM. and is republished with permission.
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I believe that investments in clean energy will continue to grow as green technologies become cheaper and more efficient.