Sun and wind don’t send a bill

Thousands of climate researchers, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, the head of the UN and the representatives of 196 governments at the last World Climate Conference all agree: the fossil age is coming to an end. The solar age is beginning and the sun is winning.

It is also clear that humanity already has all the tools it needs for this transformation. However, we must greatly accelerate the pace of this transition if we want to stop climate change in time and prevent the worst of the destruction.

The European Union has issued new guidelines for this in 2023:

• 80% of electricity must come from renewable sources by 2030;
• The 27 member states must make two percent of their national territory available for renewable energy;
• The approval periods for wind and solar plants must not last longer than two years; France must not declare its nuclear fleet as renewable.

One of the many scientists who believe that the necessary epochal change is still feasible is the US Stanford professor and entrepreneur Tony Seba. His vision:

• Autonomous driving replaces up to 90 percent of private cars;
• Wind, sun, green hydrogen and batteries replace the previous nuclear-fossil energy supply;
• animal meat production is being replaced by precision fermentation (PF). It enables microorganisms to be programmed to synthesize a variety of complex organic compounds. Protein production means microbes instead of animals.

What Seba predicted in the magazine “Energiedepesche” back in 2016 and in his books may have sounded utopian, but is already partly realized today. The animal-free diet is already turning over 100 billion US dollars a year.

The price of solar panels has fallen even faster than Seba predicted – by a staggering 90 percent in the last 15 years. For the next 15 years, he predicts that by 2039 we will experience “the fastest, most profound and momentous upheavals in the history of human civilization”…. In the areas of information, energy, food and transportation, production costs will fall to a tenth or more, while production processes will be ten times more efficient, use 90 percent fewer natural resources and produce 10 to 100 times less waste. The prevailing production system will shift from centralized extraction of scarce resources to a model of local production from limitless, ubiquitous building blocks – a world built not on coal, oil, steel, animals and concrete, but on photons, electrons, DNA, molecules and qubits”! (Source: “Energiedepesche No. 4/ 2023).

In Germany, Seba believes a 100% switch to renewable energies by 2035 is possible.

Two photos from New York from 1900 and 1913 show just how quickly a transition can take place. They show a parade on Fifth Avenue: In 1900, almost only horse-drawn vehicles and one car. Just 13 years later: almost only cars and another horse-drawn vehicle. The car industry and road construction were the two sectors of the economy that organized the mobility turnaround within 13 years. The solar and wind industry, green hydrogen, pipelines and storage facilities will change today’s outdated industries in a very similar way. These changes will take place at an exponential pace over the next few years.

China and Tesla are proving that the transition from fossil fuel-powered cars to electric cars is happening far faster than German carmakers thought five years ago. Those who come too late…

The necessary transformation will not be easy. Governments and citizens alike need the courage to set the necessary course. Germany proved that this is possible last year when more than million new solar systems were installed on local roofs and balconies – four times as many as in the previous record year of 2011. This is the only reason why more than 50 percent of electricity in Germany could be generated from renewable sources for the first time in 2023. But we need politicians and private individuals who are committed to the well-being of their children and grandchildren and don’t just grumble. And who understand that ecosystems are our life insurance.

This message has even reached some board members of energy companies. Not only Franz Alt, but also the head of EnBW, Andreas Schell, is now saying: “Sun and wind don’t bill”. Schell in the first issue of SPIEGEL 2024: “In the end, we will have a new system that supplies cheaper electricity.” Solar power is already social power today and even more so tomorrow. That’s why the CEO of Germany’s third-largest energy company wants to phase out coal by 2028.

Source

Franz Alt 2024 | Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)