Fossil fuels have similar inertia, he argues. Today, coal, oil, and natural gas still supply 90% of the world’s primary energy (a measure that includes electricity and other types of energy used in industry, transportation, farming, and much else). Smil notes that the share was actually lower in 2000, when hydropower and nuclear energy made up more of the mix. Since then, “we have been increasing our global dependence on fossil fuels. Not decreasing,” he says.
A key factor has been the economic boom in China, a nation Smil has studied since the 1970s, and its burgeoning appetite for coal. Smil was among the first Western academics invited to study the Chinese energy system. He sounded early warnings about the nation’s cooked farm statistics and perilous environmental state. Now, Smil is disheartened by China’s consumer culture: Instead of aiming to live more modestly, he says the Chinese are “trying to out-America America.”
Meanwhile, despite years of promotion and hope, wind and solar account for just about 1% of the world’s primary energy mix. In part, he notes, that’s because some of the key technologies needed to deploy renewable energy on a massive scale—such as higher-capacity batteries and more efficient solar cells—have seen only slow improvements. The bottom line, he says, is that the world could take many decades to wean itself from fossil fuels.
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