According to Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute:
“A movement has been growing for decades to replace hydrocarbons, which collectively supply 84% of the world’s energy. It began with the fear that we were running out of oil. That fear has since migrated to the belief that, because of climate change and other environmental concerns, society can no longer tolerate burning oil, natural gas, and coal—all of which have turned out to be abundant.
“So far, wind, solar, and batteries—the favored alternatives to hydrocarbons—provide about 2% of the world’s energy and 3% of America’s. Nonetheless, a bold new claim has gained popularity: that we’re on the cusp of a tech-driven energy revolution that not only can, but inevitably will, rapidly replace all hydrocarbons.
“This ‘new energy economy’ rests on the belief—a centerpiece of the ‘Green New Deal’ and other similar proposals both here and in Europe—that the technologies of wind and solar power and battery storage are undergoing the kind of disruption experienced in computing and communications, dramatically lowering costs and increasing efficiency. But this core analogy glosses over profound differences, grounded in physics, between systems that produce energy and those that produce information.
“In the world of people, cars, planes, and factories, increases in consumption, speed, or carrying capacity cause hardware to expand, not shrink. The energy needed to move a ton of people, heat a ton of steel or silicon, or grow a ton of food is determined by properties of nature whose boundaries are set by laws of gravity, inertia, friction, mass, and thermodynamics—not clever software.
“This paper highlights the physics of energy to illustrate why there is no possibility that the world is undergoing—or can undergo—a near-term transition to a ‘new energy economy.'”
Mills’ report should be required reading for advocates of the ‘New Energy Economy,’ the ‘Green New Deal,’ and all climate change control advocates with a background in computer technology. Moore’s Law does not apply to large energy production and distribution systems. Such systems are limited by basic physics.
There is also a particular need for such people to understand the difficulties of transforming intermittent energy sources. such as wind and solar, into the dependable sources of electrical energy that most users desire and need. Until the physical constraints addressed by Mills are recognized by so-called “environmentalists,” the general public should ignore their pronouncements and policy advocacy. They are not based on sound physics and engineering.
Dr. Carlin, now retired, was a 37-year career environmental economist and scientist at EPA when, in June 2009, the Competitive Enterprise Institute broke the story of his negative 100-page report reviewing the agency’s draft Endangerment Finding.
