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I believe that it's a physical plant thing. We have spent over a hundred years building hydrocarbon-based energy infrastructure. Much of that is still out there. Wind and solar have made a ton of progress in the last 15 years or so, but it's only really become substantially better financially in the last 5 or so years maybe. It's still going to take decades to actually replace most of that stuff, just as a matter of how fast we can build and install hardware.

Note also that it's a worldwide chart, so it includes developing countries that may not be so quick to jump on projects that are expensive right now even though they'll save a bunch of money in the long term. Though to be fair, some may have a leapfrog effect when it comes to building brand new infrastructure.

by dylan60417 hours ago|

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I would like to think that the switch to renewables is inevitable, but could a continuous series of administrations similar to the current US admin be enough to curtail it?

by ufmace27 minutes ago|

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Seems unlikely to me. I always thought the only engine that could actually accomplish transition was capitalism. We will transition at a time and to an extent that renewables are actually cheaper and better, no sooner and no later. Government action can encourage technological development, but it can't force the transition when the technology is not ready yet, and it can't stop it either once it's actually better. Note that we are actively building out a lot of that stuff now, even though the current administration is at best indifferent towards it. It all fits with the bottom line that we transition when the technology is ready, and the opinion of activists and Government officials isn't relevant.

by throwup23815 hours ago|

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Coal is dirt cheap, to the point where most of the cost is in transporting it and the infrastructure to convert it to power is simple and not very capital intensive to it’s the first thing developing countries reach for when they don’t have strict environmental regulations. It also doesn’t require as much precision manufacturing so a lot can be done domestically even in less developed industries, which is important when foreign currencies are in short supply.

by rollulus21 hours ago|

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That’s because of the primary energy fallacy: https://medium.com/@jan.rosenow/have-we-been-duped-by-the-pr...

TL;DR: the efficiency of converting fossil energy resources into something useful is poor.

by criddell21 hours ago|

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That chart is measuring joules of energy. I'm not sure efficiency comes into play here, does it?

Coal provides 175,000,000 TJ of energy. Solar and wind provide 21,000,000 TJ.

I was mostly surprised at how critical coal still is.

https://www.iea.org/world/energy-mix

by gpm20 hours ago|

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The problem is where it's measuring joules of energy. To use cars as an example:

It measures joules of energy as in "how much heat the gasoline we burn produces", some of which we convert to mechanical energy to drive the car, but the majority is just waste heat going out the tailpipe.

By comparison an electric car powered by solar has no tailpipe. There's still a bit of waste heat from electrical resistance, but nowhere near as much.

If we measure like this, by converting a gasoline car to electric (powered by solar for the sake of ignoring some complexity), and driving the same distance, we somehow managed to cut our "energy demand" in half. Despite the fact that we're demanding the exact same thing from the system.

If we measured "joules delivered to the tires of the car" we wouldn't have the same issue. At least until someone starts arguing about how their car is more aerodynamic so joules delivered to the tires should count for more in it.

Edit: We could also go in the other direction. Instead of reporting it as 1kw of solar energy (electricity) it could be 4kw of solar energy (the amount of sunlight shining on the solar panels)... No one does this for obvious reasons, but it's more similar to that primary energy number for fuel in many ways.

by icegreentea220 hours ago|

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The total energy supply figure is a primary energy mix - for the fossil fuels it represents the thermal energy of the fuel. You can look at the final energy consumption section a bit lower to get a different picture taking into account conversion losses.

by jeffbee20 hours ago|

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That is still subject to the primary energy fallacy. Those reports are in terms of primary energy, i.e. how much heat is released by combustion of fossil gas. But in order to replace fossil gas in a chemical plant, you need much less electricity than the primary energy of the fossil gas suggests.

by criddell18 hours ago|

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The IEA says[1]:

> For all energy sources, the IEA clearly defines energy production at the point where the energy source becomes a “marketable product” (and not before).

Doesn't that mean if you are burning coal to make electricity, you wouldn't count the heat output because the generated heat is not a marketable product.

[1] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/understanding-and-using-the...

by jeffbee18 hours ago|

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I interpret "marketable product" to mean gas at the wellhead, coal at the mine terminal.

by criddell17 hours ago|

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I didn't interpret it that way because of this line from that page:

> [Total Final Consumption] shows the energy that is actually used by final consumers – the energy used in homes, transportation and businesses.

I'm not buying coal at the terminal to power my television.

by jeffbee17 hours ago|

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Indeed, but were we not looking at TPES before?

by criddell17 hours ago|

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Yes we were.

Looking at the chart for TFC, the wind and solar case looks even worse. Wind and solar supplies 2 million TJ compared to 36 million for coal.

All I was really trying to say from the outset is that I'm surprised at how important coal still is and how little we use renewables. I see articles here all the time about the massive advancements in solar (and wind to a lesser degree) and I had it in my head that renewables were a much larger part of the energy mix than they are.