Vaclav Smil: Why the Grand Energy Transition Won't Happen by 2050

The brutal math behind our climate delusions

Energy expert Vaclav Smil's latest analysis delivers a sobering reality check: halfway between the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the 2050 net-zero target, the world has made essentially negative progress on decarbonization. Here's what you need to know from his free 2024 paper, "Halfway between Kyoto and 2050."

The "Progress" Myth

While headlines celebrate solar farms and EVs, the numbers tell a different story:

• Fossil fuel consumption jumped 55% since Kyoto, despite their share dropping from 86% to 82% of primary energy
• CO₂ emissions rose 54%, from 25.5 to 39.3 billion tons annually
• We're now more dependent on fossil carbon than when we started this "transition"

As Smil bluntly states: "All we have managed to do halfway through the intended grand global energy transition is a small relative decline... accompanied by a massive absolute increase."

The Infrastructure Mountain

Replacing our fossil fuel system means converting:

• 4 terawatts of coal and gas power plants
• 1.5 billion combustion engines in vehicles
• 50 million tractors and 100 million irrigation pumps
• Half a billion natural gas furnaces
• 120,000 merchant ships and 25,000 jetliners
• Industrial heat processes consuming 30% of all fossil fuels

And we have 27 years to do it.

The Four Pillars: No Solutions Exist

Modern civilization rests on four fossil-fuel-dependent materials with no large-scale alternatives:

1. Cement (production emits CO₂ chemically)
2. Primary iron/steel (requires blast furnace heat)
3. Plastics (hydrocarbon-based)
4. Ammonia (for fertilizers; half the world's food depends on it)

"Converting energy-intensive processes to non-fossil alternatives requires solutions not yet available for large-scale use."

The Green Hydrogen Fantasy

Making steel and ammonia with "green hydrogen" would require 135 million tons of H₂ annually—potentially 500 million tons including transport and industry needs.

That production alone would consume 86% of ALL global electricity generated in 2022. Just for hydrogen.

The Mineral Impossibility

The transition demands impossible mining increases:

• 40x more lithium than current production
• 25x more graphite, cobalt, and nickel
• Copper ore quality has collapsed from 1.41% to 0.6% in top producer Chile
• Extracting needed copper would generate 100 billion tons of waste rock—twice current global material extraction

China refines 40% of copper, 60% of lithium, 90% of rare earths, giving it tighter control than OPEC ever had on oil.

The Storage Mirage

Wind and solar's intermittency requires storage. Today's largest battery (Moss Landing, California) stores 3 GWh. A single renewable-powered Asian megacity might need 400 GWh during a typhoon week—two orders of magnitude more.

Only pumped hydro works at scale, but it's geography-limited.

The Economic Fantasy

McKinsey estimates $275 trillion for the transition. But 91.5% of projects over $1 billion exceed budgets, averaging 62% overruns. Realistic cost: $400-460 trillion —requiring 15-20% of GDP from wealthy nations every year for 30 years.

Germany alone lacks 216,000 skilled workers for basic wind/solar expansion.

The Geopolitical Deadlock

The "Big Seven" emitters (China 31%, US 14%, EU 11%, India 8%, Russia 4%, Saudi Arabia 2%, Indonesia 2%) have:

• Russia: At war, needs hydrocarbon exports to survive
• China/US: Locked in decoupling
• India: Refuses to abandon coal while China quadrupled its own use

Denmark's "success" is an illusion—it offshores all energy-intensive manufacturing.

Historical Reality Check

The first energy transition (biomass to coal) started 200+ years ago and remains incomplete—3 billion people still burn wood/dung for cooking. Coal only surpassed wood in 1900; oil took a century to reach 25% share.

We're attempting a faster, larger transition with no precedents.

The Verdict

Smil concludes that "zero carbon is a highly unlikely outcome"—academic speak for impossible given known physics, geology, and human behavior.

The gap between climate rhetoric and material reality has become a chasm. As Smil notes, modern forecasting has "an unmistakable tendency toward excessive optimism, exaggeration, and outright hype."

For policymakers and voters, the message is clear: We need plans that acknowledge these constraints, not fantasy timelines that guarantee failure.

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