[schimmy_changa]

I've read a few of his books and can also recommend them, with a caveat: Smil asserts confidently that something is infeasible or impossible, yet what he says is impossible _has since come to pass_.

The main example here is the cost of solar and wind - in his earlier books he assumes that the transition to renewables must go slower than it has, simply because solar and wind couldn't possibly be cost competitive with fossil fuels. (Yes, it's not cheaper in many circumstances, but I'm talking about cost-competitive against coal unsubsidized, for instance, something he would not have predicted would happen in the mid 2010s)

He's a fantastic historian of energy, but falls into one of Clarke's laws: _When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong_

Yes, the energy transition is very hard and will take longer than many boosters want, and the history suggests this, but he also doesn't realize that history can also be changed by _learning from_ that history.

[aksss]

I don’t seem to recall Smil saying things are impossible, just that there’s a predictable rate of improvement, and it would take a miracle to improve that rate by the needed orders of magnitude to achieve the goals in the timeframes set out by the more ambitious advocates. He doesn’t even say miracles are impossible, just that he wouldn’t bet on them happening. He throws cold water by reminding us that we’re still moving into fossil fuels globally, not reducing.

[jillesvangurp]

I'm in the camp that says the energy transition is already well underway and will be completed even without major breakthroughs in technology. Those are of course helpful but we can get there with what we have. It's not that hard. It's just a lot of work and organizing. But those are non technical challenges. And they are incentivized by huge economical benefits.

Even though we don't need them, there is actually an enormous amount of technical improvements in the research pipeline of course. Major breakthroughs in material science, energy efficiency, energy density, cost, etc. Failing to take that into account is what makes many predictions wrong. Some of that stuff is very close to market readiness. E.g, 500 wh/kg batteries are coming to market this year. Better ones might follow a few years later. That stuff will revolutionize aviation and and a few other things. Also, several Chinese cars are now shipping with sodium ion batteries (no lithium, no cobalt, or other precious metals). So, we now have a viable path to electrification that isn't bottle-necked on relatively expensive/rare metals.

Most of the progress in the energy transition is cost driven. Green technology is achieving a lot of things but the most important one is that it makes things that used to be really expensive, really cheap. And this is not over yet. There are still some orders of magnitude cost improvements coming our way. Any predictions assuming this isn't happening are basically off by orders of magnitude as well. They overestimate cost. They underestimate effect. Most importantly they under estimate the levels of investment that are unlocked by this. Which is speeding all this up.

Historians tend to be weak on their math and economic skills. That's why this one got his assumptions wrong. The rest is still informative but basically an intellectual sand castle.

He's in good company of course. Lots of people got their predictions wrong based on assumptions they were making that were simply wrong. There's still a lot of that going on. Some of it is intentional even. People in the fossil fuel industry for example have been downplaying a lot of this stuff because they need to delay the moment that they go out of business. There is a lot of lobbying related to expected timelines and predictions. The stakes are really high. But what it boils down to is that a lot of fossil fuel based energy generation is effectively obsolete right now.