Martha Walden
The Last Days of Fossil Fuels
“The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable. It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s just a matter of ‘how soon’ — and the sooner the better for all of us.” That was from Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency. Established in 1974 after the big oil crisis of ‘73, the IEA’s primary focus was to make sure that economic powers of the world would always have plenty of oil. In other words this isn’t the Sierra Club saying that the transition to clean energy is unstoppable and the sooner the better.
Energy analysts predict that the world will experience peak oil demand within a few years, and production will rapidly shrivel after that. The primary reason is competition from cheaper renewable energy. That may be a little difficult to believe right now with fossil fuel barons still battling to expand production of oil and gas, still rampaging over any ecosystems that get between them and immediate profits. However, undercutting their dominance is the stark fact that solar energy is already cheaper in many countries. By 2027 that advantage will be global.
Energy storage is essential for intermittent solar and wind energy to take over from fossil fuels, and batteries are now ready to do their part. Their energy density has soared. Prices have plummeted. In Texas, for instance, 50,000 megawatts of battery storage planned for 2024 will outstrip new natural gas plants because giant batteries are a lot cheaper. Plus Texas already gets almost a third of their energy from wind power.
New battery types have arrived. Iron-air batteries cost a tenth as much as lithium batteries, and they last seventeen times longer. They don’t scale small enough for EVs, but they relieve pressure on lithium stocks. Sodium-ion batteries, however, do scale small enough, and the world’s largest EV manufacturer, BYD, started building the first sodium-ion battery plant in 2023.
Most exciting, battery recycling has also made much progress. Rice University just developed a method that supposedly reclaims 98 percent of the minerals from batteries of all types, does it a hundred times faster than current methods, and reduces the CO2 footprint of the process. With solar, wind, EVs and heat pumps all projected to surge, is technological salvation at hand?
We have been told all along that clean energy would not have a chance to save civilization until it became cheaper than fossil fuels. Needless to say, civilization’s utter dependence on the profit motive puzzles anyone who thinks survival into the future should be at least as valuable as money. If it’s not already too late, our survival will be due to government subsidies—especially in China and Germany—bringing down prices. So much for the myth that fierce market competition drives innovation. It’s just as likely that successful corporations stand in the way of innovation in order to preserve a profitable status quo for themselves for as long as possible.
Climate activists know that much more than the right technology must be achieved. We need less waste. Less consumerism. Economic justice. Sustainability over profits. Respect for the natural world. Without these values, we will still be perpetually mobilizing to head off wholesale disaster. Even with these values, there will always be hard choices to make.