These are all very interesting statistics, but I think a key point is missed.
It is important to note that from a climate perspective, increased solar and wind is not supposed to be a goal in and of itself. It is supposed to be replacing fossil fuels, especially coal which produces the most carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy (other than wood).
There is very little evidence that this is actually happening. Increased solar and wind is in addition to coal, not instead of coal.
I was interested to see your note regarding bioenergy – "we have seen increasing interests from VCs in investing in technologies that scale bioenergy as the challenges of efuel inefficiencies become more apparent". My understanding had been that biofuels from dedicated biomass (crops planted specifically for use as biomass) is basically a horrible idea under all circumstances, due to large use of land, water, and fertilizer, not to mention all of the downstream processing that then needs to be done. (I wrote about this a while back at https://climateer.substack.com/p/biomass-overview.) Is the interest you're seeing around other forms of bioenergy, such as fuels from waste biomass? Or are sensible use cases for dedicated biomass emerging?
Conversely, I'd been holding out hope for efuels, especially as the price of solar power as an input continues to fall, but I haven't been following progress there.
These are all very interesting statistics, but I think a key point is missed.
It is important to note that from a climate perspective, increased solar and wind is not supposed to be a goal in and of itself. It is supposed to be replacing fossil fuels, especially coal which produces the most carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy (other than wood).
There is very little evidence that this is actually happening. Increased solar and wind is in addition to coal, not instead of coal.
If you doubt me, follow up on my challenge:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/prove-that-solarwind-replaces-fossil
Great review of the state of play!
I was interested to see your note regarding bioenergy – "we have seen increasing interests from VCs in investing in technologies that scale bioenergy as the challenges of efuel inefficiencies become more apparent". My understanding had been that biofuels from dedicated biomass (crops planted specifically for use as biomass) is basically a horrible idea under all circumstances, due to large use of land, water, and fertilizer, not to mention all of the downstream processing that then needs to be done. (I wrote about this a while back at https://climateer.substack.com/p/biomass-overview.) Is the interest you're seeing around other forms of bioenergy, such as fuels from waste biomass? Or are sensible use cases for dedicated biomass emerging?
Conversely, I'd been holding out hope for efuels, especially as the price of solar power as an input continues to fall, but I haven't been following progress there.