A first for everything

Hey there,

Quick update: I’m stoked to be speaking at DER Task Force's Dervos 2024 in late October. I do not know what specifically I will be discussing yet, but I'm excited and I’m sure it’ll rip. Check out the event page and come if you're around, into distributed energy, decarbonization, climate and energy tech, and more. C u there (hopefully).

For this newsletter, we’ll delve into a philosophical reflection on what’s unique about energy transition work. In short, the world has never really done it before.

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PRESENTED BY NUCOR

In case you missed it, last month we published a deep dive in two parts on Nucor, one of the largest steel manufacturers in the U.S. and one of the largest steel manufacturers globally. Importantly, Nucor produces steel with a dramatically lower emissions footprint compared to global averages and other major steel producers (per World Steel). 

By using electric arc furnaces and recycled materials instead of conducting primary production in blast furnaces with coal, Nucor is positioned to lead a global shift towards greener steel production. Nor does the company’s sustainability story stop there. Catch up on the second deep dive here:

OPINION

In one sense, there have been many successful energy transitions over the past several hundred years. In another sense, there have been none. 

To speak of past energy transitions is really to speak of energy additions rather than transitions. Humanity has never phased out any primary fuel source or energy generation technology. While its share of energy generation has fallen precipitously since the Industrial Revolution, the world still burns almost as much wood and other biomass to generate energy as it ever has. At the turn of the century, biomass provided an estimated 12,500 TWh globally, roughly three times as much electricity as the U.S. used in 2023, and more electricity than wind and solar generated combined across the entire world in 2023.

Nor is this only true in third-world countries, where many people burn wood and other biomass to cook or to heat homes. Europe, a champion of sustainability and the “green” movement in general, continues to raze forests to make wood pellets for use in large-scale power plants. Biomass still provides 4% of Europe’s electricity. In Brazil, the figure is closer to 8%, higher than the share of electricity Brazil derives from solar, even though it certainly doesn’t lack for sun. Even in “green”-minded Nordic countries like Sweden, biomass provides 20%+ of the country’s total energy, much of which is from burning wood or waste to generate heat for industrial processes rather than electricity. 

Of course, the world would need to burn a lot more wood had fossil fuels and other energy generation sources not come along. As much as we malign fossil fuels, it is good the world doesn’t rely predominantly on burning biomass for energy any more. Humanity would have had to raze most trees on Earth to meet the explosion in energy demand the world has seen over past centuries. Nor is biomass burning free of greenhouse gas emissions. A biomass-based energy system wouldn’t yield a better world, either.

It is true that humanity has gotten close to phasing out some niche energy sources. Take whale blubber, the oil that was once prized for its use in lamps from the late 18th and early to the mid 19th century. It also found other uses, such as in manufacturing steel and cordage. As Melville wrote in his epic Moby Dick, not dissimilar to the gold rush in California, 19th-century ‘blubber-fever’ ushered in a wave of whaling fervor:

Today, whale oil is almost entirely out of use. Emphasis on almost. Inuit tribes continue to use it in lamps. So even when we focus on the most niche energy sources, a full phase-out is relatively unprecedented in human history.

From the woodpile to the coal pile

To speak of the energy transition in the 21st century is really to speak of multiple necessary transitions. Coal, oil, and natural gas—the core fossil fuels—all have unique characteristics and lend themselves to different applications. 

Oil, while also used at times and in some places (ranging from New Hampshire to Hawaii and more) to generate electricity and in home heating, is predominantly used to power vehicles. Coal is predominantly used to produce electricity and to generate heat for industrial processes like steelmaking and cement manufacturing. Natural gas is notably not ‘gas’ in the conventional parlance—which refers to gasoline, a refined product of oil. Natural gas is its own distinct fossil fuel used for electricity generation, in industrial processes like fertilizer production, to power vehicles, and in a lot of home heating applications worldwide, whether for cooking, drying, or hot water heating. 

Given their differences, it’s likely that certain fossil fuels will be phased out more quickly than others. My bet would be on methane—especially methane generated from agricultural waste sources, sourced from stranded assets, or made out of the air—and oil sticking around longer than coal. This is already happening in places like the U.S., though much of this owes to how much natural gas the U.S. has access to. As discussed in these pages two weeks ago, Asia still depends largely on coal, and it will take a while for countries like China, India, Indonesia, and more to wean off coal.

Let it suffice that, so far, the ‘energy transition’ we commonly discuss—which subsumus many ideas and trends ranging from the clean energy generation deployment, the electrification of transportation and industry, and a many other things—has been more about energy additions than transitions. Just like the world never stopped burning wood, so far, solar, wind, and other cleaner energy generation technologies have mostly just joined fossil fuels (and biomass) in expanding energy access rather than deeply decarbonizing energy production.

Global greenhouse gas emissions are still at all-time highs. Fossil fuel production and consumption are also at or close to all-time highs across the main fossil fuels. Ever since their first use, which dates back to thousands of years ago but accelerated in the 18th century, the amount of fossil fuels the world burns has grown dramatically, driven by a ballooning global population that is also continuously raising its standard of living by using more energy.

Today, unimaginable amounts of fossil fuels are mined and moved every year. More than 8 billion metric tonnes of coal are mined every year. For scale, Mount Everest weighs roughly 160 billion metric tonnes. Imagine shaving a 5% chunk off Mount Everest every year, and you have an idea of how much coal is mined (and moved) annually worldwide. Two decades of current global coal production entails mining, moving, and burning an Everest-sized mass.

None of this is to say that the addition of cleaner energy generation over recent decades hasn’t helped. It has. Absent growing additions of renewable energy, nuclear fission, and growing adoption of electric vehicles and other areas of electrification, fossil fuel use would be even higher than it already is.

Reducing the rate at which fossil fuel use would have grown is nothing to sneeze at. One of the hardest things about climate and energy transition work (and climate and energy transition communications work) is that the main ‘wins’ to point to are the avoidance of even worse outcomes. Thanks to the energy transition efforts of past decades, a lot of previously planned coal-fired generation has been cancelled, which is great for the atmosphere, for reducing air pollution, and many other reasons.

Still, the fact remains that, at the highest levels, the world’s energy transition so far has only reduced the heavy lifting fossil fuels have done for hundreds of years and has lightened the load they continue to bear every day. Fossil fuels are still the load-bearing wall of society.

A first for everything

Just because something is unprecedented doesn’t mean it won’t or can’t happen. All of the above discussion merely serves to contextualize that, if and when the world weans off fossil fuels, it won’t just be a first. It will be a ‘triple’ first, insofar as it will require a transition off coal, oil, and natural gas, all of which serve different functions.

As always, I’m here to contextualize the scope of the challenge, not discourage. To return to the underlying variables that drive the energy dynamics discussed so far today, it’s worth noting that—contrary to doomsayers online—the global population is expected to continue to grow for at least another generation or two, and the average amount of energy used by the modal human being will also continue to grow. A lot of the population additions and standard of living increases that will raise global averages for things like energy and electricity use. They may not come in Europe or North America; instead, they’ll likely stem predominantly from Africa and Asia. The populations of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, for instance, are both expected to roughly double by 2050. By 2050, both of those countries will be among the ten largest countries in the world by population.

Energy additions are good things. They make life better. But we also need to accelerate a first-of-its-kind displacement, at scale, of energy generation sources that come with many problems (fossil fuels) with generation sources like nuclear, hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal, and a lot of electricity transmission and storage that are superior across many crucial dimensions.

The net-net

If you want to do things that have never been done before, you have to consider approaching them in ways you’ve never tried. It’s not that we don’t know of and know how to build energy generation sources that are more sustainable, work, and can scale. Nuclear can. Solar and storage can. Other cleaner energy generation technologies can too, and electrifying everything from transport to industry can help reduce demand for fossil fuels as well. Still, there are other things we’ll have to do that we haven’t previously tried too. Fully appreciating, pricing, and internalizing the negative externalities of fossil fuels, including externalities beyond greenhouse gas emissions, comes to mind. As does getting more creative about financing. And global collaboration.

What else comes to mind? Respond to this email to let me know and join the discussion. Maybe we’ll keep it going in the next newsletter.

OTHER ~COOL~ STUFF

What: Tomorrow (September 6th) from 10 AM to 3 PM EST, join my friend Amelia Tracy and a team of 25+ experts for a virtual discussion spanning bioregional regeneration, behavioral economics, regenerative manufacturing, and more. Participants include leaders in solar, wind, hydrogen, and more across the energy transition and decarbonization landscape.

Why: The decarbonization agenda is monumental and complex. Navigating it will require acting decisively, wisely, and developing new levels of sophistication across both technology and the workplace. Success across any number of dimensions—whether in designing the future of our energy systems, infrastructure, industry, and the built environment or addressing issues like wealth inequality, DEI, and more—requires leadership excellence.

How: Register here for free. All are welcome.

Have a nice rest of your week,

— Nick