Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I’ve followed up with an additional post that is in part in reaction to your comment, and that can be found here https://davidguenette.com/climate-change-and-class/.

The EROI point deserves more attention and I have a post in process to do just that, but basically, my argument is that EROI is too often used to denigrate renewable energy and favor fossil fuel energy, and that is a misapplication of the EROI argument through an apples and oranges error (as well as the complexities of assigning costs for determining EROI. The future development and progress of solar, wind, and storage technologies is reasonably expected, although we are likely in agreement about nuclear power playing an important role in our move away from fossil fuels. The issue of greenhouse gas production in the so-called “wasted overbuild” solar and wind manufacture is more canard than real problem as renewable energy becomes the more common energy source for manufacture processes. But, yes, we are talking about complex systems and interactions, and I have plenty more thinking and studying on this issue of intermittency resolutions, mostly due to my lack of omniscience.

Like Bryce, I find the whole idea of mitigating climate change by shutting down new sources of fossil fuels to be ill-conceived and even dangerous. Purposely causing energy shortfalls will drive up energy prices. I know may environmentalists think this a good idea since high prices will drive down energy consumption. But the reality is that it will also kill the political will to mitigate climate change while putting the biggest burden on those with the least resources. (Hence the class argument.) A far better approach is to drive down fossil fuel use by making low-carbon energy sources far more abundant and affordable.

As Bryce has also pointed out, these NGOs keep trying to kill nuclear power–insane given they supposedly think climate change is an existential crisis. These NGOs tried to shut down Diablo Canyon here in California (where I live) 20-to-40 years early, even though it is CA’s largest source of low-carbon energy in the state. And they have also worked to shut down other plants as well (with NRDC crowing about shutting down Indian Point early, which has driven up GHG emissions in that area for many years to come).

As for natural gas: so far it has been a big win for the climate in terms of displacing coal, oil and biomass burning–much more potent sources of GHGs. I would be thrilled if natural gas replaced as much coal, oil and biomass burning as possible ASAP while we ramp up sources of energy that have even lower GHG footprints. And, yes, forcing people to stop using natural gas for cooking is a loss for climate mitigation and will continue to be for quite some time due to lower efficiency of electricity generation. It is a foolish area to focus on right now for political reasons too.

By the way, EROI correlates with energy density. There is simply no way that wind and solar can have more reasonable EROIs. That’s one of the reasons nuclear is so important. As the IPCC models show, we need to increase nuclear by as much as 5x by 2050. That will greatly reduce the amount of wasted overbuild (and associated GHG emissions) of wind and solar and batteries needed to cover for intermittency. If only we could get the NGOs to get on the side of the IPCC and the climate instead their feel-good posturing.