A New World of Renewable Energy Beckons

The growing importance of renewables, the IEA noted, is especially evident in the case of electricity generation.  As more countries follow the growth patterns seen in China and South Korea, electricity is expected to provide an ever-increasing share of world energy requirements.  Global electricity use, the report says, will grow by 46% between 2013 and 2040; all other forms of energy use, by only 24%.  As a result, the share of total world energy provided by electricity will rise from 38% to 42%.

This shift is significant because renewables will provide a greater share of the energy used to generate electricity.  Whereas they contributed only 12% of energy to power generation in 2013, the IEA reports, they are expected to supply 24% in 2040; meanwhile, the shares provided by coal and natural gas will grow by far smaller percentages, and that by oil will actually shrink.  While coal and gas are still likely to dominate the power sector in 2040, the trend lines suggest that they will lose ever more ground to renewables as time goes on.

Contributing to the growing reliance on renewables, the IEA finds, is a continuing drop in the cost of deploying these technologies.  Once considered pricey compared to fossil fuels, renewables are beginning to win out on cost alone.  In 2014, the agency noted, “about three-quarters of global renewables-based [power] generation was competitive with electricity from other types of power plants without subsidies,” with large hydropower facilities contributing much of this share.

Certainly, renewables continue to benefit from subsidies of various sorts.  In 2014, the IEA reports, governments provided some $112 billion to underwrite renewable power generation.  While this may seem like a significant amount, it is only about a quarter of the $490 billion in subsidies governments offered globally to the fossil fuel industry.  If those outsized subsidies were eliminated and a price imposed on the consumption of carbon, as proposed in many of the schemes to be introduced in the wake of the Paris climate summit, renewables would become instantly competitive without subsidies.

Go Green Young Man and Young Woman

All this is not to say that the world will be a green-energy paradise in 2030 or 2040.  Far from it.  Barring the unexpected, fossil fuels will continue to rule in many areas, especially transportation, and the resulting carbon emissions will continue to warm the planet disastrously.  By then, however, most new investment in the energy field will, at least, be devoted to renewables and in most places globally there will be rules and regulations aimed at facilitating their installation.

As a college professor, I often think about such developments in terms of my students.  When they ask me for career advice these days, I urge them to gear their studies toward some field likely to prosper in exactly this future environment: renewable energy systems, green architecture and city planning, alternative transportation and industrial systems, sustainable development, and environmental law, among others.  And more and more of my students are, in fact, choosing such paths.

Likewise, if I were a future venture capitalist, I would follow the lead of Gates, Bezos, and the other tycoons in the Breakthrough Energy Coalition by seeking out the most innovative work in the green energy field.  It offers as close as you can get to a guarantee against failure.  As the consumption of renewable energy explodes, the incentives for power and money-saving technical breakthroughs are only going to grow and the rate of discovery is sure to rise as well, undoubtedly offering enormous payback possibilities for those getting a piece of the action early.

Finally, if I were an aspiring politician, whether in this country or elsewhere, I would be spinning plans for my city, state, or nation to take the lead in the green energy revolution.  Once the transition from fossil fuels to renewables gains more momentum, leadership in the development and deployment of green technologies will become a far more popular position, which means it will increase your electability.  This proposition is already beginning to be tested.  For example, the Labor Party candidate for mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is now leading the way by building his campaign around a promise to set that city on course to be 100% powered by renewables by 2050.

You’re still going to hear a lot about fossil fuels — and for good reason — but make no mistake about it: the future belongs to renewables.  Of course, Big Energy, the giant utilities, and the lobbyists and politicians in their pay, including just about the complete climate-change-denying Republican Party, will do everything in their (not insignificant) power to perpetuate the Fossil Fuel Era.  In the process, they will cause immeasurable harm to the planet and to us all.  They will win some battles.  In the process, they will also be committing some of the great crimes of history.  But the war they are fighting is a losing one. Inevitably, ever more people — especially the most dynamic and creative of the young — will be hitching their futures to the coming of a genuinely green civilization, ensuring its ultimate triumph.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @mklare1.

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