With the dead-end nuclear energy scenario binned during the present reign of the Labor Government and rapid technological change facilitating renewable energy solutions, we must now come to grips with the principal non-technical barrier to a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

All energy must be transitioned, whether it’s currently used in the form of electricity, heat or transportation. A rapid transition is essential to reduce the probability of crossing climate tipping points into an irreversible climate state that’s an existential threat to human civilisation.

Thanks to decades of research and development, and public education by Saul Griffith and many others, most people understand that the cheapest and cleanest energy strategy is to electrify transportation and combustion heating while simultaneously converting all electricity generation to renewables. And we must not overlook the need to greatly increase the efficiency of energy use, especially in buildings.

We already have all the technologies needed to reduce Australia’s GHG emissions by three-quarters. In the energy sector, the principal technological gaps still needing more work are improvements in batteries for short- to medium-term electricity storage, and development of less expensive liquid and/or gaseous “green” fuels for aviation, shipping and long-term energy storage.

Renewables are chasing growing energy consumption

Unfortunately, government focus on the remaining technological challenges that must be solved has resulted in the neglect of the non-technical barriers. The principal non-technical barrier is the continuing growth in total final energy consumption (TFEC). Despite the rapid growth in renewable energy since year 2000, this barrier has led to the result that the percentage of global TFEC supplied by fossil fuels remained constant at 80% from 2000 to 2019 and subsequently has only decreased slightly. As energy consumption grows, renewable energy is chasing a retreating target.

Electricity consumption will grow as we electrify existing energy consumption in transportation and combustion heating. That essential part of the transition is not the problem. The real problem is the continuing growth in demand for energy services: more transportation, more heating, more data and artificial intelligence centres, and more goods and services generally.

The International Energy Agency has several scenarios for future growth in global energy consumption as measured by TFEC and the resulting GHG emissions. The IEA’s Stated Policies Scenario models the direction in which today’s modest policy ambitions would take the energy sector. In it, global TFEC grows from 422 exajoules (EJ) in 2022 to 536 EJ in 2050. For comparison, Australia’s TFEC in 2022-23 was 5.9 EJ.

In this scenario, how rapidly would renewable energy have to grow to replace all global fossil energy by 2050? We compare the required future growth rate with one of its fastest growth rates so far, 2.286 EJ from 2021 to 2022. That’s our baseline. Next, we consider two growth trajectories for renewable energy, linear and exponential. (For more details, see this article.) Although renewable energy will actually grow in bursts, influenced by political and economic conditions, our two trajectories give us a rough idea of the task.

If renewable energy grew linearly (i.e. in a straight line) from 422 EJ in 2022 to 536 EJ in 2050, then a simple calculation shows that, to replace all global fossil fuel use over that period, it would have to grow at about eight times our baseline rate. Doubling and even tripling that baseline rate may be possible, but eight times?

If renewable energy grew exponentially, it would have to double every 6.8 years, doubling four times to 2050. One or two doublings with such a short doubling period may be feasible, but four?

Some technological optimists claim there is no limit to rate at which solar and wind technologies can be manufactured, and that may be true. But they are overlooking a key non-technical constraint on the growth of renewable electricity generation. The demand for renewable electricity is limited by the demand for electricity, which depends on the rate of electrifying transportation and combustion heating. This is very slow on the global scale and quite slow in Australia. Most growth in transportation and combustion heating is still powered by fossil fuels.

This rate-limiting step results from the slow turnover of existing technologies together with the neoliberal economic ideology of “leave it to the market”. The political power of the fossil fuel and related industries is also a major source of resistance to the transition. Norway’s rapid transition to electric vehicles offers grounds for hope in the transportation sector, but it succeeded by defying neoliberalism and using incentives to speed up its transition.

To have any possibility of retiring all fossil fuels in Australia and the world by 2050, we must reduce total energy consumption. If global TFEC were halved by 2050, renewable energy would only have to grow thrice the baseline rate if it followed a linear growth trajectory. Alternatively, with exponential growth, renewables would need three doublings with doubling times of a decade. Both trajectories look feasible.

Planned degrowth to a steady-state economy

But, reducing energy consumption would likely reduce economic consumption, a radical outcome in the eyes of some who might exclaim, “Are you seriously arguing for reducing GDP? Do you want to cause a recession? And what about the needs of developing countries?”

In response, consider the observation that the richest (by income) 10% of people in the world are responsible for half of all global GHG emissions. The richest 50%, which includes most of the readers of this article, are responsible for 92% of emissions. In a saying attributed to Gandhi, “the rich must live more simply so that the poor can simply live”.

This does not entail that “the global North must return to the caves and trees”, a common straw person raised by promoters of business as usual under the dominant economic system. Planned degrowth to a steady-state economy, by the rich countries, is receiving serious scholarly discussion by sustainability researchers (see e.g. here, here and here).

In summary, they recognise that GDP is a poor measure of human wellbeing and could be replaced by a broad set of indicators that include measures of environmental quality, public health, public education, public housing, public transport, public parks, and publicly funded childcare and aged care. They present a case that a national government should provide these universal public services and a job guarantee for all who wish to work, and that the principal goal of the economic system should not be economic efficiency, but instead the joint goals of protection of our life support system (the natural environment), and social justice.

Most people would benefit from following this pathway. But, supporters of business as usual — including the very rich, the fossil fuel industry and the mainstream press — will make every effort to hide from the public the benefits of transitioning to a sustainable society.

As the moving target vanishes into the distant future, so will the well-being of planet Earth and its inhabitants.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.