It’s the best of times and the worst of times for environmentalism and the world’s clean energy future, with great prospects matched only by great challenges. While the “Dawn of the solar age” recently featured on the cover of The Economist, the fossil fuel’s Death Star is always ready to strike back.
VALUES TO VALUE:
I spent years working with a business called Easy Being Green, earning carbon credits through a government scheme by distributing energy saving light globes free of charge to households, but it was never that easy.
To paraphrase Kermit the Frog’s lyrically inspired cliche, it’s never been easy being a greenie, or a green business for that matter, especially in the energy sector.
In simpler times, last century, environmentally concerned citizens overwhelmingly were conservationists, translating their love of nature, focused on wilderness and iconic species, into action to protect them.
That’s still what drives many environmentalists to this day. It’s noble and pure.
If only it were that simple.
The landscape and the seascape are much more complex as we near the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, with the atmosphere literally changing around us, by which I mean humanity now numbering more than 8 billion people.
In taxonomy terms, old-style conservationists were like a single species, but nowadays, environmentalism is at least a genus with multiple species or perhaps even a family with multiple genera.
At the very least, I see:
- eco greens
- sustainability greens
- community greens
- scientific greens
- political greens
- policy wonk greens
- corporate greens
- techno greens
- investor greens
And just to confound a traditional taxonomical approach, it’s quite possible to have hybrids who embody some or possibly even all of the above.
Or are they mutants?
Mutations actually would make sense, in biological terms, because the operating environment is changing dramatically, as are the stimuli, and adaptations are required.
The problem is that from a Darwinism perspective, natural systems evolve over biological and geological time frames, and humans are changing the planet in our own lifetimes.
Above all, the climate crisis, the net zero imperative and the energy transition are combining to propel the complication of what it means to be green in 2024 and beyond.
The other great environmental crisis of our very human times, biodiversity loss through ecosystem destruction and species extinctions, is closely related to the climate crisis. But it has its own special challenges, too, led by too many people encroaching on too many of nature’s diminishing strongholds and toeholds.
Logically enough, as environmentalism has become a more dominant theme for people, driven in part by our own self-interest, as well as ethics, its meanings have expanded, and its applications and allegiances have fragmented.
Eco greens and sustainability greens – there’s a difference
The biggest fracture line is between what I’ve called eco greens and sustainability greens, and the divisions here bleed into all the other subtypes.
The eco greens are the inheritors of the belief systems pioneered by the traditional nature-based conservationists, and frequently, they are an inspiration for community greens, who are trying to preserve locally-based ecological, aesthetic and also human assets and heritage values.
Along comes the wind farm…
So along comes a wind farm development proposal, either onshore or offshore, or a big solar farm, and it’s being promoted by a mix of techno greens, corporate greens and investor greens, broadly aligned with policy-wonk greens and often political greens.
The corporate and investor versions, in particular, may ultimately bear little relationship to local values and relationships because attracting foreign investment is critical to Australia’s renewables-led energy transition.
For example, in big solar, currently, the top investors in Australia are a little-understood Chinese giant, Beijing Energy International, followed by French group Neoen, which is in the process of being acquired by Canadian-based investment powerhouse Brookfield.
Sounds complicated, right?
The sustainability greens support wind farms conceptually, because they see the big picture of global heating as the greatest threat to the planet and people alike. An umbrella challenge under which trying to preserve any particular place or ecosystem or species becomes largely irrelevant.
The eco greens nonetheless want to save the nature they love in place, and the community greens want to save their place.
You can’t blame them, and we can often accommodate many of their concerns, steering clear of the most environmentally and community sensitive scenarios.
But the massive transformation required to create a clean energy future and decarbonise the global economy for 8 billion-plus people, within decades, with net zero greenhouse gas emissions, isn’t compatible with zero environmental impact.
The opponents of a renewables led energy transition have recognised this, and their spin doctor legions funded by coal, gas and oil vested interests, along with their nuclear energy collaborators, are honing their attacks.
Fractures in the green wall will be used and abused
One of their favourite targets is any hint of a fracture line in the green wall, with a prime example being local environmental and community opposition to energy transition infrastructure like transmission lines, wind and solar farms, big batteries and pumped hydro.
Which is why it’s more important than ever to remind ourselves that being green is never easy, but can become hellishly difficult through disunity.
Solar rooftop take up was quick and vast
Progress like the extraordinary uptake of rooftop solar in Australia can lull us into a false sense of security. Even encouraging us to imagine we have the luxury of getting overly fussy about our clean energy future, and what needs to be built where, when, and at what cost.
In recent days I was reminded of the immensity of the challenge we still face to bring the fossil fuel era, and its existential threat to the human and natural worlds, to a close.
Dutch entrepreneur Jacqueline van den Ende is an inspiring clean technology investor figure, who has a great way with big numbers, as a recent social mediapost illustrated:
- It would take about 10 million 2 megawatt wind turbines to generate enough electricity to replace the world’s current fossil fuel use. Currently, there are ±341,000 wind turbines globally (GWEC, Global Wind Report 2021).
- Meeting just 10 per cent of the world’s transport energy needs with bioenergy by 2050 would require an area of cropland larger than India (IEA, Renewables 2019)
- To produce enough green hydrogen to replace current global oil consumption, it would require ±69,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year, which is more than three times the world’s total electricity production in 2019 (BloombergNEF, Hydrogen Economy Outlook 2020)
- Meanwhile… The world’s energy demand is growing, not slowing. Data centres for example currently consume 1 per cent of the world’s electricity. Driven, amongst others by AI, this electricity demand is projected to grow by eight time by 2030 (International Energy Agency – IEA, Renewables 2019)
Van den Ende’s real point is that no amount of wonderful new technologies and infrastructure is going to save an increasingly fragile natural environment, our life-support system, from the further growth of human civilization.
She says: The uncomfortable truth is that we will also quite drastically need to change our behaviour … Fly less, eat less meat, overall consume less energy. We need to shrink our footprint … which will likely require a rewiring of our definition of success from growth to something else.
The real work of being green has barely begun.
We’ll need every species of green, working in unity with great purpose, to deliver the human transition in tandem with the energy one.