Dave Waters, Director & Geoscience Consultant, Paetoro Consulting UK Ltd

For anyone involved in energy right now, there is a labyrinth of new possibilities and new propositions. I think many if not all of us are learning on a weekly basis the advantages and disadvantages of the new options out there. Discerning the hype from the help is no easy matter. It seems likely there is no one solution, but lots of different things that can contribute to progress. Every so often in this evolving process I like to do a bit of personal re-balancing and capture where I'm at - for my own benefit. It's not set in stone and always open to further evolution. Some premises and views are presented here as a personal snapshot. Nothing more, nothing less.

• Global warming is of significant concern and on some time-scale the use of hydrocarbons for combustion should be wound down in consequence.
• Hydrocarbons are not just used for combustion as fossil fuels, they have other non-emitting uses that will continue to provide a long term demand – albeit at some difficult to predict level and price. In many ways burning them is a waste anyway.
• Plastic use also has to modify in light of its increasing impact but modern society cannot function without plastics of many forms.
• Given it has taken several centuries for the world to develop this thirst for hydrocarbons, it will take time to wean, and time is needed to transition - people matter. 
• That said the rates of CO2 increase in the atmosphere mean it is no time to drag feet either. Some few will dispute that this is of concern, but unanimity is not the pre-requisite for action.
• Still well over 80% of global primary energy is supplied by hydrocarbons and any change will be gradual if pockets of energy poverty are to be averted.
• It does seem like a new change, different to past “false dawns”, has indeed initiated. This manifests most strongly in investor appetites, not least in appetites of the energy companies most historically involved in hydrocarbons themselves. There is writing on the wall. Many walls. That said, history is littered with proclamation of such things, and likely the old dogs have a bit of life in them yet.
• Some strategies are primarily aimed at a temporary solution (even if on a ~ century time scale) to ease the transition – such as carbon capture, coal to gas – and they have a role over coming decades but are difficult to see as the end solution. Hydrocarbons are not an inexhaustible resource anyway, so getting a long term "plan B" up and running is something humanity has to do sometime. Now seems an appropriate time to get started under the circumstances.
• Renewables have a long way to go to provide not just power (where they are doing very well) but also transportation and industrial fuel primary energy needs (where they have yet to dent annual global increase in hydrocarbon consumption). They still remain only at the stage of reducing the annual increase in hydrocarbon consumption, not actively decreasing it. There are indications this might come but it has not arrived yet. The only fossil fuel that is currently decreasing in any global use count is coal. We can point to percentage contribution charts all we like but what matters for the atmosphere is absolute values and they are still going up.
• It is important to differentiate between present day renewable contribution to power generation and to overall primary energy needs, lest we get a false impression of progress to date.
• That said, the acceleration in renewables technologies is impressive, increasing, and investment appetite is strong.
• Solar, wind, geothermal [sensu-stricto], ground & water sourced heat, tidal, wave, improved use of waste energy, are all showing significant technological improvements and this is accelerating.
• Many applications of these renewables can involve expensive new infrastructures (e.g. district heating networks), and hesitancy to invest in these capex heavy projects is often an understandable issue, but again, appetites are changing.
• Nuclear options, both fission and fusion are evolving fast too, and are not the same as they were in the 20th century - but are typically expensive options.
• It is counter-productive to think we can predict progress in competing technologies too much. All of them are subject to surprises, both good and bad. Markets are fickle and fluid. Picking one winner too early seems counterproductive. That said, physical laws are the same for everyone. Reality checks on that basis are important.
• The world has no shortage of energy options, just cheap clean ones. Solar radiation. The atmosphere. The oceans. Rivers and ground. The deep earth. Radioactivity. These are vast pools of energy. The challenge is not finding energy sources, the challenge is harvesting them cost effectively and safely. Proclamations that vast energy pools exist do not tell us anything we don't already know. It is the detail tied up in the process of harvesting them that makes them sink or swim, not the size of the ocean they float in.
• Chemical (battery), thermal, and mechanical storage and transmission/interconnection technologies greatly increase the options available to renewables.
• That said, it is important to keep sight that storage technologies are only as green as the power or heat supplying them. They are not in themselves the solution, just an additional and very useful means of deploying the temporally variable energy sources that might contribute to a solution.
• A likely long term century scale solution seems to involve "renewables-plus", where the “plus” is still under consideration and may involve a number of different elements for different applications.
• Leading and controversial contenders for that “plus” at the minute - some still not technically or commercially proven - include nuclear fission, nuclear fusion and green hydrogen, in conjunction with other new and existing storage and transmission technologies.
• The realities of cost and value are important. Technical feasibility is not by itself an indication of long term sustainability. Costs and values though are not just about cash, but also other intangibles. Stability, reliability, environmental impact, and longevity are other important factors.
• All options involve a supply chain that has both raw materials and waste products – during exploration, construction, operation and decommissioning. All options involve pollutions of some kind. Quantitative assessment of impacts associated with these full supply chains is needed to truly compare options.
• The reality of physical constraints on efficiency are also important. All else being equal the most energy efficient low-emission processes are the best ones unless there are other important user-specifications dictating the process required (e.g. light weight and portability combined with supply on demand – as per transportation & especially aviation).
• That said, if large almost inexhaustible pools of energy are being harvested efficiency may not be the most important primary concern. The energy is there and any use of it up from zero usage improves the status quo, if it is cost-competitive.
• Standardised ways of formally including of the costs of carbon emissions and making them more “tangible” go a long way towards quantifying the best solutions - but this remains very difficult in an international geopolitical context. Waiting for international agreements will be a long wait (not holding breaths) and unilateral boldness on the part of individual states may be called for. 

So, a personal 2020 snapshot and the cat thrown amongst the pigeons.

Dave Waters, Paetoro Consulting UK