Power to the People: abundant clean energy, always and everywhere

Why another book on the energy transition?

Together with a team of researchers, writers and graphical artists I’m writing a book on the transition from fossil fuels to (mainly) renewable energy from solar and wind, due to be publised in the second half of 2025. There will be a starring role for “holons”: semi-autonomous energy hubs that replace our current centralized top-down energy system with a decentralized bottom-up energy system running on solar and wind that puts most of the power (economicaly, politically and socially) in the hands of end users. We will focus on: 1) the abundance of solar & wind; 2) how to make sure the system works always; and 3) how to transport the energy so it works everywhere.

As an engineer at heart, I’m often unaware of my emotions. I thought we wrote the book because this new system is simply rationally superior. But now that my wonderful father in law just died I find myself reminiscing about my feelings, and I increasingly find that my motivation lies in the urge to give people who are depressed a hopeful positive energy future they can believe in.

Allow me to explain why I think that degrowth and anti-capitalism are just as unhelpful as denialism. And I would love to know if you think we are on the right track with our optimistic and radically hopeful approach.

With fossil fuels we are living on borrowed time, and we’ve known this for over 150 years

Fossil fuels where always a temporary solution because we use them up a million times faster than they where created.

We’ve know we’d run out since around 1865 when the British economist William Jevons published "The Coal Question, an Inquiry concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines." In this he also introduced what is now known as “Jevons Paradox” observing that increased efficiency leads to increased consumption.

Around the same time, the French inventor Augustin Mouchot started developing solar heat engines. In 1869 he published “solar heat and its industrial uses” and in 1878 he demonstrated the result at the Universal Exhibiltion in Paris where it won a gold medal.

Around 1917 Alexander Graham Bell wrote: "The unchecked burning of fossil fuels would have a sort of greenhouse effect" and "The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house."

In 1931 Thomas Edison said to Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone: "We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel, when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy—sun, wind, and tide. I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."

And in 1974 the prevailing vibe in the Netherlands was that we where burning the earth like a candle and we had no idea if anything would come after that. (I had a poster with this candle in the classroom.)

So we might have ignored the scarcity and climate effects of fossil fuels for a long time. But deep down we’ve know for over a hundred and fifty years and I think it has sapped us of our positivity.

Fossil fuel has many other drawbacks, apart from the fact that it’s running out and causing climate change. It causes health problems and wars. It finances the worst kinds of dictators, imams and capitalist ideologues. It makes us dependent of unfriendly regimes far away. So while I am grateful fossil fuels allowed us to create our current civilization, we should replace them asap.

Denialism by the champions of the status quo

This is denied by many people afraid of change, especially on the right. And these denialists are supported by the powers that be. Experts of the status quo don’t want to believe their precious knowledge is obsolete. CEOs of fossil fuel companies don’t want to let their shareholders know that profits are about to take a nosedive and that they are in a morally bankrupt industry. Conservative politicians dislike the disruption that comes from replacing fossil fuels. And all these people are very well established and have deep pockets. So although I’m well known on twitter for debunking their nonsense stories (e.g. about halting solar growth, limited resources, and the green house gas emissions of electric vehicles) they seem to be in endless supply.

Useless whining and depression on the left

The people that don’t deny that we have to ditch fossil fuels are often equally problematic. The loudest voices are in the media (who are always looking for alarming news) and in left-wing social circles. There it has become en vogue to blame all kinds of nebulous concepts like consumerism, capitalism and growth. But what do these concepts even mean? Is it bad when we finance the growth of solar when it replaces coal at the same time? I don’t think so. Solar is basically unlimited and could be produced without causing any green house gasses. We should be growing and financing that as fast as possible. That also illustrates my problem with the degrowth movement. They have to be more specific and hands-on about what they want to degrow and what they want to grow. They should also recruit more engineers to the movement, so they understand a modicum of technology. I love many of the values of equality and empathy they try to embody, but I consider it a lot of handwaving, and its offputting to most people. So I consider it ineffectual counterproductive whining.

And about capitalism: we have a lot of examples of succesful countries that limit capitalism. Neoliberal extremism is not good for health and happiness when compared to these countries. For example in Europe there are many countries that limit capitalism in the sense that they make sure everybody can get healthcare and enough money to live with dignity. And unless you are an ideologue that is against any form of government “just because” you have to admit it works great. However, that doesn’t mean taking it to anti-capitalist extreme is a good idea. Karl Marx was a clever guy, but experiments where we completely do away with capitalism have so far been spectacularly unsuccesful. So I see people calling for that as a (very loud) fringe phenomenom that mainly succeeds in providing a straw man for neoliberal ideologues. I don’t doubt that the ensuing culture war is gratifying for them but like the degrowth enthusiasts I don’t think they are helpful.

Climate depression is bad, stop denying that

I regularly read pieces by people basically shrugging about climate depression, because “at least these people acknowledge the problem”. I find that cynical and morally objectionable on so many levels. If you think that you should be ashamed of yourself. Unless you are in a serious depression yourself and need help. Depression is basically the opposite of happiness. It should be avoided like the plague. Literally.

Often it’s not really depression but simply whining of course. Basically critisizing without taking the trouble to think about how to make things better. Whining just puts people off and solves absolutely nothing. Instead we need a positive can-do attitude. To encourage this I think it’s helpful if people understand how we can quickly replace fossil fuel with abundant energy from solar and wind. That gives us an energy future we want to believe in and work towards. So that’s my mission.

What do you think? Are we on the right track? Do we need to change our approach tot the book? Please let me know in the reactions on Twitter or BlueSky.