Ramping up wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles can’t solve our energy problem

Photo of Somerset Wind Farm by Jeff Kubina | Wikimedia Commons | CC BY-SA 2.0
Author
Gail Tverberg
Year
2023
Published in
Our Finite World

Many people believe that installing more wind turbines and solar panels and manufacturing more electric vehicles can solve our energy problem, but I don’t agree with them. These devices, plus the batteries, charging stations, transmission lines and many other structures necessary to make them work represent a high level of complexity.

A relatively low level of complexity, such as the complexity embodied in a new hydroelectric dam, can sometimes be used to solve energy problems, but we cannot expect ever-higher levels of complexity to always be achievable.

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