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An Analysis of the Replacement of Non-Renewable
Energy for Renewable Energy in 25 Years
Chris Santacesaria
ENG 355
M/W/F 10:00-10:50 am
2/20/2025
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While reading A Global Assessment: Can Renewable Energy Replace Fossil Fuels
by 2050? By Jerry Holecheck, Hatim Geli, Mohammed Sawalhah, and Raul Veldez, I
noticed the authors from the beginning were trying to establish a sense of urgency in their
writing. The title itself gives a time limit of only 25 years to make changes to what
energy we consume and how efficiently we use it. The authors highlight the growing
trend of global temperature rise from the pre-industrial era to more modern times to show
the timeline of extreme pollution, and the time remaining before reaching a point of no
return is exponentially growing smaller. This “ticking clock” on our timeline reinforces
the idea that improving energy demand and efficiency while decreasing global pollution
numbers is a global effort. The response I had while reading this piece was that this
would be an extremely uphill battle to fight. Some of the glaring bottlenecks in energy
reform highlighted are the growing human population, the dwindling non-renewable
energy quantities, transportation demand, and land utilization to name a few. Before
reading this article, I had only considered the quantity of fossil fuel energy left and how
we use it, and now realizing just how technical and resourceful the process of switching
energy sources could be. I felt the authors establishment of urgency was just, yet I remain
skeptical in their educated guess on the amount of time we have to reform. The authors’
estimate of 25 years is not an arbitrary value, but instead an estimate of how long our
global fossil fuel quantities will last us. This estimate is coupled with the growing human
population and the directly proportional growing energy demand. However, I feel 25
years is lower than the actual time we have, but I believe the value of 25 years has some
margin of error placed into it lowering the actual time remaining considerably.
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The authors research methods for obtaining our status quo related to energy use
and demand comes from data on human populations released by the United Nations, and
they relied on the British Petroleum Statistical Review of World Energy 2021 to find
statistics on global energy consumption. Reliance on British Petroleum (BP) statistics of
energy comes across as a source that could be brought into question since BP is heavily
invested into energy consumption. However, trying to find a less biased source for energy
statistics in detail on a global scale proved to be difficult for myself, so I believe the
authors went with the best option available to them. The authors interpret their results in a
balanced manner that, in my eyes, quelled some growing doubts about the conclusions
they drew. A good example of the authors balancing their conclusions with reality is
when they draw conclusions on increasing renewable energy use. The authors claim that
fossil fuel use can be almost eliminated if renewable energy use is increased sixfold.
(Global Assessment 3.3) However, immediately after making this claim they reintroduce
the reality of how slow moving this process could be. Some factors they highlighted
included renewable energy density, renewable energy transportation, and land available to
farm renewable energy. While some of these factors seem like typical bottlenecks of
commodities, the authors go in depth as to why these factors will have heavy impacts on
switching to renewable energy. When looking at transportation of renewable energy, as an
example, we must remember that the energy will most likely be farmed at a set location
and stored in a battery. That battery must be transported on land, sea, or air to its
destination. When we factor in that we can’t expend most of the land suitable to establish
these energy farms we could see an increase in energy transportation. The authors
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highlight some solutions an average person could do to simplify this whole process of
energy transition. The authors suggest that developing urban areas can begin building
their housing into more compact housing units, limiting the energy demanding appliances
of home due to less of an area to work with.(Global Assessment 3.5.2) Building off of the
idea of compact living would be an increase in mass transit since people have less room
to own personal vehicles and they could cut down on vehicle carbon emissions, and
reduce some demand for non-renewable energy while renewable energy reliance is being
built up. One point the authors made throughout the article is not to completely abandon
all non-renewable energy sources. It is made clear throughout the article that energy
efficiency is almost as important as the type of energy. One source of energy that remains
non-renewable and yet is extremely efficient is nuclear energy. Nuclear energy currently
only makes up about six percent of global energy supply, yet it is about eight thousand
times more efficient than fossil fuel burning. (Global Assessment 3.4.6) Improving
nuclear energy quantity could provide more time on the authors proposed timeline of
fossil fuel depletion, or could give us some “wiggle room” to improving our renewable
energy sources or our carbon capture technologies. Some downsides to heavy investment
into nuclear energy are the long time periods it takes to build a nuclear powerplant, the
high cost to retrieve fuel sources such as uranium, the overall space they take up, and the
stigmas associated with nuclear power. Nuclear power has grown so much since incidents
such as Chernobyl that the safety protocols have become very dependable, yet the stigma
persists which I feel has greatly limited its potential as an energy source.
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The authors wrote this article with funding from the National Science Foundation
and New Mexico State University. The article states that in no way did these
organizations influence the study, analysis, or interpretation of data. I believe that the
funding from these organizations did not add a layer of bias to the research article as
these institutions hold credibility with their products. Articles like these are the purpose
for the NSF’s existence, and I, also, believe that inserting bias into these institutions
would be difficult. It is my opinion that this article would only benefit the global
population with their research and conclusions drawn from it. Building off these ideas
presented in this article can only help to improve our current energy situation. Using state
university funds along with government funds seems appropriate when talking about how
to improve energy efficiency and quantity. I reached this conclusion based on the values
that I hold of social well-being and the idea of clean growth, or non-polluting growth.
While I find the authors scientific and qualitative analysis of the statistics of
energy demand for non-renewable or renewable energy, and how to utilize or improve
them to be strong. I find some solutions they proposed for the average person to take part
in to be lacking through a humanitarian perspective. The authors proposed solutions for
people to take part in to sustain our energy demand is have people live in more compact
living spaces. The authors state that the effects of this would reduce energy demand since
you have less space requiring power. Logically, a move such as this makes sense.
However, in practice of this idea we have learned that it comes with some devastating
consequences. The most notable consequence can only really be seen after decades of
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living in compact spaces have passed. That consequence is a declining population for a
nation. To put it simply, if people have less space to live with then they have less
children. After decades of having fewer children, a nation could be put into a
demographic crisis. A great example of this consequence can be seen right now in China.
During the Great Leap Forward movement in China, millions of people that had been
traditionally subsistence farmers had been forced into large cities to kickstart China’s
industrial revolution. Excluding famine, being forced into cramped spaces meant people
had less room to work with, and as result had less children. Currently, China is home to
some of the largest urban areas on the planet, and having been that way for about sixty
years we can get a good look at their demographic trends and the projected population
that results from living in small spaces.
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While initially, the trends don’t look too worrisome for a nation trying to maintain
a healthy population. We can see that for the past couple years the Chinese population is
in decline. We must, also, consider other factors such as emigration, but it is still clear
that mass urbanization at a rapid pace such as 25 years could be disastrous for human
population numbers. These scenarios are not exact, but I feel the results will come out
similar. Building onto this we could see an increase in urbanization could lead to
increases in crime, filth, and disease in those urban areas.
I still remain skeptical of the timeframe the authors of A Global Assessment: Can
Renewable Energy Replace Fossil Fuels by 2050? gave as to how long we have to fix our
energy problems. I do firmly believe the majority of the solutions they proposed would
be effective and manageable such as nuclear power development and increasing the
efficiency and reliability of some renewable sources for energy.
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Works Cited
Holechek, Jerry L., et al. “A Global Assessment: Can Renewable Energy Replace Fossil
Fuels by 2050?” Sustainability, vol. 14, no. 8, 2022, pp. 4792-,
https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084792.
China’s Population and Projections. World Economic Forum, Shanghai Academy of
Social Sciences, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/07/china-population-shrink-60years-world/.