Mark Mills Compares Hydrocarbons and Renewables

Contributed by Robert Lyman © 2024. Robert Lyman’s bio can be read here. 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Mark Mills is a Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He also is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and one of the leading analysts and commentators on energy and climate issues. A few years ago, he wrote three lengthy articles that addressed the implications and challenges related to the proposed transition of the world economy from its present dominant reliance on hydrocarbons (i.e. oil, natural gas and coal) to so-called “clean energy and renewables” to meet growing energy needs.

This article will use quotations from Mark Mills’ articles to illustrate his views on the differences between hydrocarbons and renewable energy, in particular industrial wind turbines and solar energy.

To completely replace hydrocarbons over the next 20 years, global renewable energy production would have to increase by at least 90-fold. For context: it took a half-century for global oil and gas production to expand by 10-fold.

Hydrocarbons – oil, natural gas and coal – are the world’s principal energy resource today and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Wind turbines, solar arrays, and batteries, meanwhile, constitute a small source of energy, and physics dictates that they will remain so. Meanwhile, there is simply no possibility that the world is undergoing – or can undergo -a near-term transition to a “new energy economy”.