Thoughts on energy (1 of 3): role and limits of Renewables

Renewables cannot solve our problems. If the goal is Business as Usual, of course.

Context

This is the first part of a 3-post series in which I am going to aggregate and share some links, concepts and thoughts about the general problem of providing energy to contemporary society, and the role that appropriate, open, digital or at least digitally-enabled technologies have in solving that problem.

Thoughts on energy (1 of 3): role and limits of Renewables /img/renewables-unintended-consequences.jpg

These days, I’m doing lots of research on renewables energies, and energy in general. Here are some of the negative assertions that I have collected and am still digesting (your feedback is very welcome, of course):

Thoughts on energy (1 of 3): role and limits of Renewables /img/the-problem-with-biofuel.jpg

The end result would be that:

Let’s do renewables anyway!

As I said, here I deliberately aggregated only bad “news” about renewable energy. I have done it not to dismiss renewables. Quite the contrary actually. I want to understand and share their objective limits, exactly to make the best use of renewables, for the right reasons. Continues here, and please please please send me your critiques, links, opinions, work opportunities… via Twitter or email. To directly support this and my other work, see below instead.

Images sources: “The Renewable Energy Disaster” and “Climate of unintended consequences - NYT”