From our bird's-eye view of the renewable energy industry, we often see positive developments for humanity before they become common knowledge. The purpose of this blog is to highlight the clean energy innovations and sustainability actions that are legitimate cause for optimism despite the very real threats to people and the environment posed by climate damage.
by Co-Founder Phil Coupe
To help us imagine a future without fossil fuels in the context of the incoming administration, let’s ignore climate as a rationale for a clean energy transition. Let’s instead focus on the fundamental attributes of coal, oil, and gas compared to renewable energy.
The infographic below from Dr. Richard Perez helps us understand the relative abundance of energy sources and their respective ability to meet global demand. The small blue marble at lower left illustrates worldwide energy demand at 19 TWy per year (19 trillion kilowatt hours), and the size of the other spheres is in relation to their ability to meet global demand. Note the crucial distinction between "finite" and "renewable" resources:
At a recent presentation on Artificial Intelligence (AI) by Rebecca Emery of SeacoastAI, I asked Rebecca to run this query across AI platforms: “how many years of coal, oil and natural gas are left in known reserves globally?” She ran the query through the AI platforms known as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and ClaudeAI. The AI platforms unanimously came back with estimates of roughly 80 years of oil and gas, and 120 years of coal. An eyeblink in geologic and geopolitical terms.
Considering the finite, polluting, single-use nature of coal, oil, and gas, we think it’s rational cause for optimism that wind and solar power have scaled faster than any other sources of electricity in history, and that they work so seamlessly with hyper-efficient clean technologies like heat pumps, battery storage, and electric vehicles.
The incoming Trump administration could have a tempering effect on our clean energy optimism, but there is a critically important geopolitical consideration for America regarding Trump’s promise to “drill baby, drill” as part of his energy dominance strategy.
For the past 200 years, fossil fuels have powered the most profound advancement in human history, catapulting societies into modernity around the world, enabling the built environment of our communities and cities as we know it today. During this time period the fossil fuel industry accumulated colossal wealth, making it the most powerful entity on earth today. Knowing it’s unlikely that coal, oil, and gas will be around for two more centuries, one global superpower has decided that the first nation to achieve true energy independence without fossil fuels will become the strongest nation on earth:
When President Reagan had the solar panels removed from the White House in 1981, he announced America’s intention to double down on fossil fuels. Almost overnight he killed a U.S. clean energy industry that was barely in its infancy.
In doing so, Reagan unwittingly gifted to China a multi-billion-dollar economic development opportunity that has turned into a trillion-dollar clean technology manufacturing boom. Now, 40+ years later, China dominates the global manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and stationary batteries, controlling roughly 80% of the market for renewable energy and hyper-efficient clean technologies.
Although China continues to be the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, it is moving quickly toward a low carbon future by deploying wind, solar, EVs, and batteries at an unprecedented pace. In 2023, China installed 62% more wind and solar than the rest of the world combined.
Another startling aspect of China’s clean energy progress is seen in its world-leading adoption of electric vehicles. In 2023, it built 8 million EVs, compared to the rest of the world’s 5 million. For the first time in history, a nation’s sales of plug-in vehicles have reached parity with internal combustion engine vehicles, which empowers China to reach ‘peak oil’ and ‘peak gasoline’ consumption faster than the rest of the world:
Besides immense Chinese state investments in EV manufacturing capacity, what other factors are driving their rapid pivot away from the internal combustion engine? Efficiency is the biggest factor. Consider that 80% of a gallon of gasoline is wasted during combustion, meaning that roughly 20% of the fuel actually goes toward propulsion:
The inverse is true for electric vehicles, which is why EVs are steadily eating global market share from internal combustion engine vehicles:
Despite China’s multi-decade head start on its clean energy transition and the associated economic development and manufacturing opportunities, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law include more than $400 billion in funding for domestic manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and batteries. To date, these two efforts have unlocked more than $200 billion in private investments in U.S. clean tech manufacturing facilities.
For the first time since ReVision Energy launched in 2003, we anticipate being able to source the vast majority of our solar panels from America. From a values standpoint, we made the decision early on that we would never source solar panels from China, and we have held tight to that commitment for more than two decades as we look forward to buying exclusively Made-in-the-USA technology.
Although there is great uncertainty about the real-world impacts of the incoming administration’s energy policy, we are cautiously optimistic that the national security imperative of the clean energy transition combined with the jobs and economic development benefits will prevent reckless dismantling of the core provisions of the IRA and Infrastructure Law.
