Renewable Energy Versus Renewable Electricity

If I were President Obama I would give Dave Roberts some kind of medal before I left office. Roberts easily wins any competition to combine serious, in-depth knowledge of the challenges of the conversion to renewable energy with clarity of communication.

In this most recent piece on Vox he makes the point that we are not as far along with our conversion to renewable energy as people think, because most of our progress has been in electricity generation, while a lot of our fossil fuel use consists of burning oil products for transportation.

But wind and solar are only for electricity, so they only displace coal and natural gas. Oil is used for transportation and industry, and it still completely dominates those categories. It’s not going anywhere, at least until we figure out a way to electrify everything, which won’t happen in the next five years.

Link:  America isn’t using nearly as much renewable energy as Americans think