I regret to say that most renewable sources (specifically wind and solar, but very much not hydropower) make countries more dependent on natural gas. Electricity must be used within a fraction of a second of it being created, this demand side infrastructure means that power plants that can be turned on and off quickly are needed to back …
I regret to say that most renewable sources (specifically wind and solar, but very much not hydropower) make countries more dependent on natural gas. Electricity must be used within a fraction of a second of it being created, this demand side infrastructure means that power plants that can be turned on and off quickly are needed to back up wind and solar power. These power plants are almost always natural gas plants (although oddly, hydropower can do this quite well too, but hydropower isn't available everywhere since it's geography specific).
Oil goes largely for transportation (see here: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Transportation_energy_use) and very little other energy sources go into transportation. Renewables like wind and solar don't go towards powering our vehicles (biofuels do, but that is and will probably remain a very small amount of transportation energy. In order to get off of oil we need massive investments in fuel cell (like hydrogen) vehicles and electric vehicles.
I teach about energy and climate issues at a university and would be happy to have a conversation about this in more depth if that would be helpful. I know that your team values getting the science right about climate change since it's real, it's bad, it's us, it's the fossil fuels and it's time we do something about it. The details about getting off oil and natural gas are trickier than most people realize though.
I regret to say that most renewable sources (specifically wind and solar, but very much not hydropower) make countries more dependent on natural gas. Electricity must be used within a fraction of a second of it being created, this demand side infrastructure means that power plants that can be turned on and off quickly are needed to back up wind and solar power. These power plants are almost always natural gas plants (although oddly, hydropower can do this quite well too, but hydropower isn't available everywhere since it's geography specific).
Oil goes largely for transportation (see here: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Transportation_energy_use) and very little other energy sources go into transportation. Renewables like wind and solar don't go towards powering our vehicles (biofuels do, but that is and will probably remain a very small amount of transportation energy. In order to get off of oil we need massive investments in fuel cell (like hydrogen) vehicles and electric vehicles.
I teach about energy and climate issues at a university and would be happy to have a conversation about this in more depth if that would be helpful. I know that your team values getting the science right about climate change since it's real, it's bad, it's us, it's the fossil fuels and it's time we do something about it. The details about getting off oil and natural gas are trickier than most people realize though.