Commentary on Max Fawcett's article 'When "blindingly obvious" facts about the…'
Max Fawcett's subtitle "Debunking Don Wright's well-meaning interventions on the subject". How well did Max Fawcett do with his debunking effort?
Here is a link to Max Fawcett’s post.
Basically, this discussion is mostly about the question “is the energy transition occurring?”
I think the energy transition should be measured by how much fossil fuel production is permanently displaced (still increasing globally), reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (still increasing globally), reduction in air pollution (still increasing globally) and standards of living for all people on the planet (most still have insufficient, or no, access to energy).
Max Fawcett’s article discusses wholesale prices of electricity. As for wholesale prices of electricity, people only care about the retail prices they pay. On this point “Beyond LCOE” is required reading as Lazard reports exclude too many factors to be useful (see the bottom of page seven in their 2025 report).
The recent report from the Centre of Independent Studies in Australia is important because it accounts for dispatchability and ancillary services that renewable energy advocates often overlook. “The Renewable Energy Honeymoon: starting is easy, the rest is hard”
As for batteries, they delivered 0.001% of global electricity generation in 2024 and consider electricity is about 20%-25% of global energy consumption, some reality is required.
To see overall that we are experiencing energy additions (not transitions) see the following
and this Decouple podcast episode. Read the book “More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy”
Read the report by Sandia National Laboratories “Utility Experience with Inverter-Based Resource Impacts on Transmission Protection” in which the reader will see the criticality of ancillary services on the electricity grids.
If anyone likes energy data and lots of charts, check these ones from CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway, Global Carbon Budget charts.
If we are approaching peak demand, as Max Fawcett suggests, will this ensure all 8.2 billion (and counting to 10 billion by about 2050) will have a decent standard of living? If all of us have a good standard of living, we will need to consume about 4x as much energy as we do today. Here are two that make me question we are reaching peak demand chart 1, chart 2. Also of interest to me is the remaining carbon budget. Those three charts came from Global Carbon Budget. Here we can compare energy use per capita per year for every country. For example, Germany is 38,000 kwh/person/year and Bangladash is 3,000 kwh/person/year, so if we are “approaching peak demand” it seems most of the global population will need to remain living in poverty.
If it was natural gas that drove up prices, then why not simply get rid of it? I wrote about this eight years ago as to why its not very easy. Three Requirements of Electricity for Modern Societies. I am not aware of an electricity grid that has at least 30% electricity generated by non-hydro renewables and has low electricity prices. See this interview of Aidan Morrison, a co-author of “The Renewable Honeymoon is over” report.
It would be fair to include the following if you are going to discuss solar panels in Pakistan. “Pakistani officials are desperate to slow a world-leading solar revolution, as a surge in cut-price Chinese panels and batteries bleeds the country’s finances and threatens the viability of its debt-ridden grid.” & “Power minister Awais Leghari says poorer customers are subsidising those who can afford solar”.
In my opinion, Hans Rosling’s 15 year old TED Talk “The Magic Washing Machine” is required viewing. Nine minutes and still very relevant today. He wrote the book “Factfulness” and founded “Our World in Data” and “Gapminder”
“the widely asserted claim that electricity systems based predominantly on wind and solar will be low cost is not borne out by empirical evidence.” David Roberts is quoted (he obtained a degree in philosophy and was a movie critic before making the switch to writing about energy) for using Texas as an example, but for the first 9 months of this year the electricity generation is Gas-CC 33%, Coal 13%, Nuclear 8%, Gas 8%, Wind 23% and Solar 14%. Why would TX be used as an example of “electricity systems based predominantly on wind and solar”? See the “Fuel Mix” section here. As for the other example used, when checking this link, it doesn’t look to me like Spain is “predominantly wind and solar” either. I’m not sure one would want to use Spain as any kind of example anyway based on this Oct. 9 FT article “Spain’s grid operator warns of renewed blackout risks. Red Eléctrica says sharp voltage fluctuations threaten ‘security of supply’ without new tools to manage them”.
Global consumption of oil, coal and fossil gas continue to increase year after year in absolute terms. We are obviously no where close to any transition off of fossil fuels like we are off whale oil (and on to coal). If we were transitioning off of fossil fuels, we would be seeing a decrease in global fossil fuel consumption in absolute terms year after year. For example, this article from June 17, 2025 “Why the world cannot quit coal. Ten years after the signing of the Paris climate accord, demand for coal shows no sign of peaking. Coal is cheap and abundant in China, which has been racing to expand its electricity systems to meet growing demand.”
I thought section 2. “Poorer Countries Still Have an Immense Amount of Catchup to Do” in Max Fawcett’s post was, um, incomplete.
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs has setup 17 Sustainable Development goals, as you can see here. Goal 7 is “Affordable and Clean Energy”. Todd Moss states “Unfortunately, the level is set at just 100 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per person per year in cities and 50 kWh in rural areas. What does a person get with 100 kWh per year? That’s barely enough power to run lights for a few hours a day and to charge a cell phone. Maybe a small fan.” I put together six graphs in a one page pdf file that clearly show this target is, to put it graciously, woefully inadequate. I have included within that pdf file a link to a very helpful interactive graph on Our World in Data. Max Fawcett, Dan Woynillowicz, Markham Hislop, Clean Energy Canada, Pembina Institute what should the target numbers be for SD7 and how are they to be achieved? Here is the article by Todd Moss that the above quote came from “What We Get Wrong About Energy Poverty”.