Pursuing 100% decarbonized grid is insane

As I noted recently, there are many problems left to be solved before our electrical grid can possibly be 100% decarbonized. But incredibly, many want to go even further and decarbonize not only the grid but all of our energy use. They want to electrify all energy now supplied directly by fossil fuels.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the energy supplied to end users in the U.S. in 2022 was 76 quadrillion BTU (quads). Only 13.3 quads of that was supplied from the electrical grid. Most, 57.7 quads, was supplied directly from fossil fuels, and about 5 quads from biomass. If all of the end use of the fossil fuel energy was electrified, the output of the electrical grid would have to increase by about 3.35 times that of the current grid. That takes into account the fact that, presently, most of the fossil fuel energy that is used in the transportation sector is used in heat engines and a lot of it is lost as waste heat.

Per the EIA, the U.S. had 1,160,169 MW of utility-scale generation capacity in 2022. Adding 3.35 times that would result in a required grid capacity of 5,046,735 MW. Just for batteries to back that up for five days, about the minimum time needed considering the durations of recent severe winter storms, would cost about $306 trillion based on current Tesla battery pricing of about $505/kwh. Trillions more would be required for the immense amount of additional wind and solar power generation and transmission systems.

Pursuing this approach is obviously insane, yet most of our political leaders, including President Biden, most other Democrats and many crony capitalist Republicans seem to favor it. They should all be voted out of office at the first opportunity.