No we are not just adding renewables on top of fossil fuels, because renewables will be overwhelmingly cheaper, better and more reliable. The amount of demand for fossil fuel energy will decline to approximately zero, even if for no other reason than simple economics. And I'm still
on record predicting that human global energy consumption will increase by at least 10x in my lifetime.
For illustration, let's look at 21st-century history of the United States electricity market. This is a prime example because of the US geology and geographic population distribution. The US has a huge supply of cheap domestic coal. US coal consumption was stable from 2000-2010, after which it has declined by 55% as of 2023 (see chart below). US coal consumption per capita is down
63% since 2000. This rapid collapse of coal has occurred despite US total electricity consumption having grown slightly since 2000. Coal plants
with capital costs already paid off are being retired early, year after year.
View attachment 966143
Source:
IEA
Peabody Energy (a huge, old American coal company) filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2016. This is the earnings per share chart of a company disrupted by a new technology called fracking.
View attachment 966151
Source:
Macrotrends
This flight from coal occurred mainly because US oil & gas companies (not exactly bastions of environmentalism or anti-fossil fuel sentiment) engineered breakthrough new technologies for how to extract natural gas from difficult shale wells at shockingly low cost. The second main reason is that in the 2010s wind energy achieved cost competitiveness and meaningfully large production scale.
Just as gas and wind have disrupted coal,
cheap, flexible, reliable solar photovoltaics and batteries will disrupt
all previously dominant energy sources (fossils, nuclear fission, hydro).
Besides cost, there's also the fact that we have aging electrical grid infrastructure. It needs tremendous capital expenditures in the coming years. Plus, how long are people going to tolerate the growing tendency of grid equipment to ignite horrendous wildfires? Solar and batteries are the only electricity generation technologies that allow for practical colocation of the generation and the load, even at small scale, with no need for high-voltage power lines or big transformers in between. Additionally, this elimination of major transmission infrastructure will probably delete even more cost.
The two longest multi-day losing-streaks for TSLA** are tied at 7 days:
