The Big Misconception About Clean Energy

Instead, we should raise our clean energy production ambitions. We don’t want to replace 100% of our current dirty energy — we want to generate vastly more energy than we are currently using and make it zero carbon.

What does having a lot more energy let us do? For starters we can avoid the worst of the climate crisis by aggressively shifting to electrification of transportation, heating and cooling, production and so forth. We can also deal with water shortages through desalination. We can produce food in climate controlled environments. And we can fortify an... See more

But the big picture question of how we orient ourselves is important. We shouldn’t be looking at our current energy usage and asking, “How can we get this much energy, but cleaner?” We should be looking at a 45-year energy diet and asking, “How can we use clean energy technology to shatter this barrier and open up incredible new vistas?”