I'm in the camp that says the energy transition is already well underway and will be completed even without major breakthroughs in technology. Those are of course helpful but we can get there with what we have. It's not that hard. It's just a lot of work and organizing. But those are non technical challenges. And they are incentivized by huge economical benefits.
Even though we don't need them, there is actually an enormous amount of technical improvements in the research pipeline of course. Major breakthroughs in material science, energy efficiency, energy density, cost, etc. Failing to take that into account is what makes many predictions wrong. Some of that stuff is very close to market readiness. E.g, 500 wh/kg batteries are coming to market this year. Better ones might follow a few years later. That stuff will revolutionize aviation and and a few other things. Also, several Chinese cars are now shipping with sodium ion batteries (no lithium, no cobalt, or other precious metals). So, we now have a viable path to electrification that isn't bottle-necked on relatively expensive/rare metals.
Most of the progress in the energy transition is cost driven. Green technology is achieving a lot of things but the most important one is that it makes things that used to be really expensive, really cheap. And this is not over yet. There are still some orders of magnitude cost improvements coming our way. Any predictions assuming this isn't happening are basically off by orders of magnitude as well. They overestimate cost. They underestimate effect. Most importantly they under estimate the levels of investment that are unlocked by this. Which is speeding all this up.
Historians tend to be weak on their math and economic skills. That's why this one got his assumptions wrong. The rest is still informative but basically an intellectual sand castle.
He's in good company of course. Lots of people got their predictions wrong based on assumptions they were making that were simply wrong. There's still a lot of that going on. Some of it is intentional even. People in the fossil fuel industry for example have been downplaying a lot of this stuff because they need to delay the moment that they go out of business. There is a lot of lobbying related to expected timelines and predictions. The stakes are really high. But what it boils down to is that a lot of fossil fuel based energy generation is effectively obsolete right now.
Even though we don't need them, there is actually an enormous amount of technical improvements in the research pipeline of course. Major breakthroughs in material science, energy efficiency, energy density, cost, etc. Failing to take that into account is what makes many predictions wrong. Some of that stuff is very close to market readiness. E.g, 500 wh/kg batteries are coming to market this year. Better ones might follow a few years later. That stuff will revolutionize aviation and and a few other things. Also, several Chinese cars are now shipping with sodium ion batteries (no lithium, no cobalt, or other precious metals). So, we now have a viable path to electrification that isn't bottle-necked on relatively expensive/rare metals.
Most of the progress in the energy transition is cost driven. Green technology is achieving a lot of things but the most important one is that it makes things that used to be really expensive, really cheap. And this is not over yet. There are still some orders of magnitude cost improvements coming our way. Any predictions assuming this isn't happening are basically off by orders of magnitude as well. They overestimate cost. They underestimate effect. Most importantly they under estimate the levels of investment that are unlocked by this. Which is speeding all this up.
Historians tend to be weak on their math and economic skills. That's why this one got his assumptions wrong. The rest is still informative but basically an intellectual sand castle.
He's in good company of course. Lots of people got their predictions wrong based on assumptions they were making that were simply wrong. There's still a lot of that going on. Some of it is intentional even. People in the fossil fuel industry for example have been downplaying a lot of this stuff because they need to delay the moment that they go out of business. There is a lot of lobbying related to expected timelines and predictions. The stakes are really high. But what it boils down to is that a lot of fossil fuel based energy generation is effectively obsolete right now.