Bloomberg published an interesting analysis on why “We’re Not as Addicted to Fossil Fuels as You Think“.
Basically the gist of it is that when you look at amount of energy consumed worldwide, it looks like a really huge number to completely replace with renewable energy sources like solar and wind. But what isn’t immediately obvious is that fossil fuels are much less efficient than newer zero-emission options.
Because so much of the energy is lost as heat or noise, you actually only need a fraction of the original primary energy to get the same final energy and useful energy.
Check out the story, it’s pretty interesting: