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Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCXIV–We’re Saved! Solar Photovoltaic Panels.
If you’re new to my writing, check out this overview .
Recently, a member (JS) of a Facebook Group (Peak Oil) I am a member of posted a graph (see above) of the massive increase in the energy supplied by solar photovoltaic panels and led with the following statement and question:
“China, for all their faults, has ramped up solar panel production to civilizational scale levels. The entire energy consumption of the U.S is 4.3 Terrawatt (sic) hours, so they’re making a non-trivial impact. As China starts consuming less oil and electrifies everything they’re doing, they’ll take huge pressure off the rest of the world’s energy supplies. I don’t think anyone was predicting that fast of a ramp up. It’s essentially best case scenario. Anyone want to provide a good counterargument that we’re doomed?”
The various responses by Peak Oil group members is what follows. I share these as there are considerations that members of this group highlight that most people don’t use to assess narratives regarding ‘renewables’. [Note: I’ve tried to capture these in order of response except for mine which I close with and seems to have garnered the most secondary responses. I’ve also included all comments up until posting of this Contemplation and grouped them to reflect standalone ones vs. those with secondary responses.]
I follow up this conversation with an artificial intelligence large language model summary of the comments that captures the essence of the discussion.
DI: Just means China will last longer, long run tho we’re still doomed. Also China’s oil demand wont go down either way.
BS: And Spain and Portugal suffered a nationwide blackout due to the imbalance between actual spinning reserves and inverter power when one large inverter based solar system went off-line and shut both countries down in under 30 seconds due to a cascading shut down of inverters across both countries.
GH: Industrial solar (and wind, etc) still require fossil fuels. The net effect of ramping up these sources is just to keep economic growth going for as long as possible in the wake of peak oil. Will alternative industrial energy sources moderate the effects of peak oil for awhile and enable us to more effectively use the remaining fossil fuels (especially coal)? Yes. Will they fundamentally change the fact that industrialization is based on nonrenewable resources? And the exponential growth of consumption of non renewable resources? No.
Doomed either way. Just with solar we’re doomed at little later and we consume more coal along the way.
DI: I think China is hedging every bet. Going big on solar and coal, etc at the same time. They know climate mitigation is a lost cause that may actually hasten the decline. They’re trying to last as long as possible. I think it’s a smart plan. Stock the lifeboat and cover as many bases as possible mindset. Distinctly different than the bau with a bunker mentality in the West.
OK: We need to achieve a 90% recycling rate of energy related minerals for the whole world and for many other critical minerals too, if not – we are doomed.
PS: OK, I wouldn’t say “we’re” doomed. I would say, however, the economy at this size is doomed. That, in turn, will piss many people off to the point they will want some serious revenge. It will not be fun for many many many many many …. recipients of that revenge.
LS: OK, the problem is that isn’t economically feasible nor is it energetically viable for many of these minerals. And we’re solely focused on the minerals without recognising the energy inputs. You can’t recycle usable energy; it’s a one way process
KC: OK,
BC: And for all that PVP solar power to date not one piece of, well anything, has been manufactured by only, sorry, Renewable Energy Converters the likes of PVP’s WT’s; on the other hand that nuclear fusion plant in the sky has produced near everything, including ourselves.
But let’s look at some facts:
Globally only ~20% of energy is supplied in the form of electricity, and only ~2% of that is provided by REbuildables/Alternative Energy of which nuclear power is a fraction of that, leaving ~80% still reliant on FREE FINITE Flammable Fossils (FFFF), which are diminishing fast. So better get those REbuildables built quick pronto, before FFFF’s become unaffordable in an EROEI sort of way.
For all the PVP’s China has installed its hardly moved the needle, of course building massive AI data training centres consuming as much as a small city and hooking them up to the dispatchable power of coal and natural gas doesn’t help
PC: BC, y are no able to understand basic maths, and you show it. 2 TW equals 2600 TWh/year. Nuclear is less then 500 GW that equals to perhaps 300 TWh.
And it is becoming still more negligible, at 500 plus GWp installed each year. The curve is hyperexponential, for now. It will be 1 TWp/ year and then more.
This part of paradigm is already decided. Then there are more thing to understand.
Better concentrate on those issues.
BC: There was a time when giving a citation it was necessary to trawl through and mostly fall asleep over reading books the like of you’ve cited, but now all we’ve got likes of Gemini, GROK and ChatGPT, (other AI-LLM’s are available) and if one can’t help you, or you don’t trust it’s answer, then just try another
PGK: BC, If an AI-LLM was really intelligent its answer to “How can we save energy?” would be “Shutting down AIs like me would be a good place to start.
CR: Solar is still bad for the environment, didn’t ya know?
TA: As I understand it the Silicon in the solar panels is not taken from sand but quartz that requires mining or quarrying. The panels have a finite lifespan and are difficult to recycle so over the total life cycle of a solar panel the EROEI is low but positive.
As others have said it will buy some time but it’s can kicking not a solution.
Solar panels don’t work well at night or in snow so there’s a lot less utility from them. Gas turbines are generally used as a back up to provide grid energy when “renewable” energy is not available to avoid brownouts. To reliability use renewables an enormous amount of surplus energy must be stored for dark days and nights over winter, if I recall correctly Simon Michaux recommended around a month’s worth of energy as an absolute minimum to rely on renewables alone. This is difficult to achieve with current technology. The mineral requirements become very difficult achieve globally due to finite known reserves if every country turns to renewables
I would recommend watching planet of the humans as well Simon Michaux’s interviews and presentations. He has done a lot of work on the amount of available mineral resources
LM: As China begins to build the biggest gas pipe line in the world from Siberia to China.
That’s a BS example of exponential growth for solar. Now if that was a fracking graph
And for all China’s faults , FFS my ancestors in the UK demolished half the forests by the time Jesus was born and since then they destroyed 40% more , not to mention the British elites colonising great swathes of the earth. Shall we mention all the shit that’s gone on for the last 200 plus years and still goes on from collective western countries?
JS, sorry man you’re way of the reality. Not saying they’re perfect, but….China, For all their faults! . Come on
JD: It’s not just solar. Wind nuclear you name it China has and is ramping up the electrification. Add Battery technology and their dominance in EV vehicles.
EV vehicles out of China are now cheaper than IC and BRICS countries are buying them like hot cakes
PB: you’re going down punk
IL: Solar is unstoppable. A free energy source vs. one where you have to fuel it constantly will win every time.
Me: IL, ‘Free’? I assume you are not referring to the complex industrial panels that are referenced in the graph and introduction.
IL: Steve, sure. I mean what fuels them. Photons that knock electrons onto wires and are useful electricity.
Me: IL, You’re not being clear or I’m not understanding. Are you referring to solar panels providing ‘free’ energy? And their buildout is thus unstoppable?
IL: Steve, yes. They’re pretty incredible.
Me: IL, Your assertion that they provide ‘free’ energy is akin to calling an electric vehicle clean relative to internal combustion engines by only looking at tailpipe emissions. It is a significantly narrow perspective that ignores so much.
And, sure, they’re pretty incredible (for a limited time) if you ignore all the destructive processes that are required to produce, distribute, maintain, and reclaim/dispose of them. Or dismiss the fact that they are simply adding to our overshoot predicament and its symptom predicaments.
IL: Steve, okay. I think it’s going to be the last source of electricity. A tiny fraction of humanity will be using them to power small applications long after the rest of the world is back to stone tools.
Me: IL, So if most of the world’s people are depending upon stone tools in some future time, you might want to rethink your position that solar panel technology is incredible and their buildout unstoppable since the narrative most ‘renewables’ advocates support is that a mass production of these industrial technologies will soon replace hydrocarbons in a wondrous energy transition and ‘save’ our complex societies from catastrophic climate change and other symptom predicaments of ecological overshoot; thereby preventing any widespread ‘collapse’ scenarios.
IL: Steve, I don’t know about any wonderful energy transition, but for the time being solar is growing exponentially. It may not continue, but for the time being it’s seen as a solution.
Me: IL, Yes, it is being seen as a ‘solution’; especially by those marketing and selling them.
CG: No counter argument here, I thought 2008 or so was peak energy and shale come along. Solar could do the same and I’d be wrong about doom again, at least for now.
GH: CG, 2008 was peak net energy. If you read Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies it’s clear what section of his arc graph we’re on at this point in history. But yeah, it’s going to be awhile before things actually collapse to a lower order of social complexity.
To me it has nothing to do with what I want. What I might want either way is just irrelevant. But I do make it a point to try and embrace reality, haha.
CG: GH, Same, but I’m also fine if it doesn’t versus a lot of folks that want it to happen.
GH: CG, I understand, I’m 55 as well. But honestly I’m reconciled. Fine with watching it unfold if it happens within my lifetime.
CG: GH, Eventually it will get us and in the big picture the date doesn’t matter. I’m 55 though and ten years one way or another makes a huge difference to me.
SA: “As China starts consuming less oil” haha, good one, that made me chuckle.
The only thing that will reduce China’s oil consumption is collapse or war, both at the same time is possible suppose.
Me: There are so many errors in your assertions, it’s hard to know where to begin. Here’s a few areas off the top of my head for you to consider and do some homework on.
Perhaps you want to explore tech trends and the fact that early adoption does not a long-term uptake make.
Maybe look into what in-tandem reductions in hydrocarbons are occurring (or not) with this buildup of Chinese renewables.
You could also research the mineral and material limits and bottlenecks that exist to reach this promised land of the hydrocarbon replacement theory.
There’s also the fact that the vast majority of primary energy use continues to come from hydrocarbon sources despite a supposed mass increase in ‘renewables’.
Then there’s the dependency on hydrocarbons of many of the major industrial processes that procure and refine the necessary materials and produce, distribute, and maintain all the ‘renewables’ to consider.
And then there’s the material and mineral needs (and their limits) of the infrastructure and the energy storage facilities required.
Maybe explore the economic aspects and how much of China’s ‘renewables’ sector is heavily subsidised by a State running massive deficits to keep its economic Ponzi from collapsing, and how many of these businesses are on the verge of bankruptcy/collapse.
Add the ecological destruction that accompanies all the above and the replacement theory truly is one relying upon massive magical thinking.
SH: Steve, But… Moore’s Law !
Me: SH, I’ll see your Moore’s Law with Jevon’s Paradox.
SH: Steve, I’ll raise with Rebound Effect, Backfire Effect, Cognitive Biases, and Embodied Energy and Emissions… I’m all in!
Me: SH, Entropy…I win!
SH: Steve, I resign.
SH: Before one can really appreciate the predicament that humanity is in, they must adopt a very broad perspective. Anyway, for some reality based refinements, try reading through some of what Simon Michaux has written on mineral resources, what Alice Frideman has explored in relation to various alternative energy and storage schemes, and more important, a big dose of reality by way of a seminal text on biophysical economics… Like Charles A. S. Hall and Kent Klitgaard’s “Energy and the Wealth of Nations”. If you can even just skim through that book and have at least an atom of the prerequisite knowledge required to understand it, you may come away with a very different perspective. Of course it would also be of benefit to understand the broader context of Overshoot… So you might check out William Catton Jr. as well…
BC: SH, There was a time when to provide a citation with reference to a book it was necessary to have trawled through those books, and most probably falling asleep along the way. But now with the likes of Gemini, GROK, ChatGPT, (other AI-LLM’s are available) you can obtain the information near instantly, and if you want to cross check it, or you don’t like it, or don’t trust it, just ask another AI-LLM
SH: BC, You can also have A.I. summarize pretty much anything… premise, salient points, conclusions and all that… You can even do that with long video interviews and lectures… or entire books! You can have A.I. compare many sides of an issue from many sources to help you make a more complete and fair evaluation… It’s really up to your imagination… but that’s the problem. You’d think that aggregated summary and conclusions would be digestible… but most people I know seem to prefer popular tropes, or just plain ignorance.
SH: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/19-simon-michaux; Energy and the Wealth of Nations https://educons.edu.rs/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/2018-Energy-And-The-Wealth-Of-Nations.pdf ; Overshoot https://monoskop.org/images/9/92/Catton_Jr_William_R_Overshoot_The_Ecological_Basis_of_Revolutionary_Change.pdf
CR: SH, AKA, overpopulation…
LS: Steve, you summed it up nicely. I’m sure if China had an ample supply of oil they wouldn’t be so committed to electrification. This is an energy security issue, which is a sovereign security risk, first and foremost. What China does have a substantial domestic supply of is coal and minerals. If supply lines were to be cut off or restricted due to external forces solar has become a crucial factor in shoring up their energy independence. The downside is coal supplies have a limited timeframe of mere decades at current consumption rates. That implies no more solar construction. No different to US and impending shale cliff
Something you didn’t mention was the different (or rather additional) constraints associated with a society that has reached a critical scale of electrification. There are various videos showing electric car owners pushing their vehicles because they have been unable to recharge due to supply/access restrictions. Whilst this is reminiscent of the impacts from oil shocks there are additional vulnerabilities. Any disruption to electricity grids now impacts a far greater proportion of the social infrastructure and makes the system acutely vulnerable due to concentration of choke points for energy supply. This is felt particularly in high demand periods like summer extreme heat and day time peaks. Now transportation is competing with the provision of other services like cooling, heating, cooking, lighting etc
PS: HI Steve – To your point… here’s a 25 year proportional comparison between fossil fuels consumption and non-fossil fuel consumption. Less than 1% shift toward non-fossil fuels while increasing overall consumption by 52%.
A stand alone analysis offers a one dimensional perception. A comparative analysis offers perspective…
Me: PS, So, in other words, the uptick in ‘renewables’ is adding to our energy use and not replacing hydrocarbons like the cheerleaders of photovoltaics assert. Their relatively recent massive buildup is simply exacerbating all the negative aspects of our species growth and ecologically-destructive ways, and thus expediting the inevitable consequences of overshoot.
PS: Steve, They will likely be sustained at increasing cost over time as replacements become a competitive, demand driven market. That will yes make them unsustainable at the volume desired.
Artificial intelligence large language model summary of the above discussion [bold emphasis added]:
“The conversation centers on a post celebrating China’s massive scale-up of solar panel production, suggesting it could alleviate global energy pressures and questioning if “doom” is inevitable. The overwhelming response from the group is highly skeptical. While acknowledging the scale of the build-out, members argue it does not fundamentally change the trajectory of societal collapse due to ecological overshoot, resource depletion, and the inherent limitations of renewable energy technology itself.
Key Themes and Arguments
Solar is an Add-On, Not a Replacement: The primary critique is that renewable energy sources like solar are not replacing fossil fuels but are adding to total energy consumption, enabling further economic growth and resource depletion. One member (PS) provides a graph showing that despite growth in renewables, fossil fuel consumption has increased by 52% in 25 years, with less than a 1% shift to non-fossil sources.Fundamental Physical and Economic Limitations: EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested): The energy and resources required to mine, manufacture, transport, and maintain solar panels are immense and still depend on a fossil-fueled industrial base. The net energy gain is questioned. Mineral and Resource Bottlenecks: There are finite limits to the minerals (e.g., from quartz, not sand) needed for solar panels and battery storage. Achieving the necessary scale for a full transition is seen as physically impossible or energetically unviable. Intermittency and Storage: Solar power is intermittent. To rely on it alone would require storing a massive amount of energy (e.g., a month’s worth) for nights, winters, and low-production periods, which is not feasible with current technology and mineral reserves. Recycling is Not a Solution: Achieving a 90%+ recycling rate for critical minerals is deemed economically and energetically impossible.China’s Motives are Pragmatic, Not Idealistic: Many commenters see China’s renewable push not as a climate solution but as a strategic move for energy security and independence, given its vast domestic coal and mineral reserves but reliance on foreign oil. It’s noted that China is simultaneously expanding its coal power and building a massive gas pipeline from Siberia, hedging its bets to “last as long as possible.”“Doom” is Merely Delayed, Not Averted: The consensus is that solar energy may “kick the can down the road” by prolonging industrial civilization for a short while, but it ultimately exacerbates overshoot. The conclusion is that we are “doomed either way,” just slightly later and after consuming more coal and other resources. The conversation references thinkers like Simon Michaux (mineral limits), Joseph Tainter (collapse of complex societies), and William Catton (overshoot) to support this view.The “Free Energy” Fallacy: A brief exchange challenges the idea that solar energy is “free,” arguing this perspective is dangerously narrow. It ignores the vast, complex, and ecologically destructive industrial processes required to create and maintain the technology. The energy from the sun is free, but harnessing it at an industrial scale is not.Conclusion of the Discussion
The group concludes that the narrative of a simple, smooth transition to renewables is a form of “massive magical thinking.” The build-out of solar is seen as a symptom of the attempt to maintain a growth-based system that is inherently unsustainable. It may moderate the effects of peak oil temporarily but will not prevent a larger civilizational-scale collapse driven by the fundamental laws of thermodynamics and ecological limits. The debate is not if the current economy is doomed, but when and how the consequences will unfold.”
A couple of my recent Contemplations on this subject:
Keep Calm and Carry On…Human Ingenuity and Technology Will Save Us! Part 1 Website Medium Substack Part 2 Website Medium Substack Part 3 Website Medium Substack
‘Renewable’ Energy: See, Hear, and Speak No Evil, Part 1 Website Medium Substack Part 2 Website Medium Substack Part 3 Website Medium Substack
What is going to be my standard WARNING/ADVICE going forward and that I have reiterated in various ways before this:
“Only time will tell how this all unfolds but there’s nothing wrong with preparing for the worst by ‘collapsing now to avoid the rush’ and pursuing self-sufficiency. By this I mean removing as many dependencies on the Matrix as is possible and making do, locally. And if one can do this without negative impacts upon our fragile ecosystems or do so while creating more resilient ecosystems, all the better.
Building community (maybe even just household) resilience to as high a level as possible seems prudent given the uncertainties of an unpredictable future. There’s no guarantee it will ensure ‘recovery’ after a significant societal stressor/shock but it should increase the probability of it and that, perhaps, is all we can ‘hope’ for from its pursuit.”
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You can also find a variety of resources, particularly my summary notes for a handful of texts, especially William Catton’s Overshoot and Joseph Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies: see here.
