How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going

by Vaclav Smil

Alas, a close reading reveals that these magic prescriptions give no explanation for how the four material pillars of modern civilization (cement, steel, plastic, and ammonia) will be produced solely with renewable electricity, nor do they convincingly explain how flying, shipping, and trucking (to which we owe our modern economic globalization) could become 80 percent carbon-free by 2030; they merely assert that it could be so. Attentive readers will remember (see chapter 1) that during the first two decades of the 21st century Germany’s unprecedented quest for decarbonization (based on wind and solar) succeeded in boosting the shares of wind- and solar-generated electricity to more than 40 percent, but it lowered the share of fossil fuels in the country’s primary energy use only from about 84 percent to 78 percent.