Decarbonize energy
How to produce enough energy (for the world) without burning fossil fuels?
Energy sources
- Scale up solar power, with energy storage - Requires innovations
- Scale up wind power, with energy storage - Not enough on its own
- Scale up nuclear power - Requires innovations
- Geothermal electricity, and hydropower including tidal: These depend on very specific geography that isn't available in most parts of the world.
- Biomass waste energy: Supply is limited to the amount of farmed land on Earth, which can't be increased much without deforestation.
Vehicles
- EVs with sodium-ion batteries
- Hydrogen combustion vehicles - using hydrogen gas produced by surplus wind power
Things that won't work
- The status quo (mostly gasoline cars and diesel trucks)
- EVs with lithium-ion batteries (too much cobalt)
(...)( This is true even when manufacturers brag about batteries having "only" 3% cobalt. Not low enough: It would have to be less than 1% - otherwise, cobalt scarcity is still the most limiting factor in scaling up EVs. See page on lithium-ion batteries for more details. ) - Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (too much platinum or palladium)
(...)( Note that hydrogen gas production also needs these metals, but the fuel cells would need 7 times more on average )
Things that could somewhat work
- EVs with LFP batteries (no cobalt, lithium-based; still not as scalable as sodium-ion)