Munk Debates Podcast, Season Two, Episode #2 - Future of Energy

Be it resolved, the future of energy is renewables.

GUESTS
Ramez Naam
Mark P. Mills

[ostrich]

Competent, wise, and polite debaters. Bravo!

[mash]

Thank you, Rudyard for the excellent topic and your wonderful and gentle moderating of the session. Thanks to Mark and Ramerez for your perspective. I wonder if you could make the transcript of the debate available. I am planning to become a member soon. We need this kind of format where participants can share their perspectives and insight without shouting at each other. May earth be filled with wisdom and peace.

[chaptertravels]

It all comes down to a single metric, energy density. At no time in history have we gone from high density/reliable energy sources to less energy-dense/less reliable energy sources. This is for very good and obvious reasons, nothing is different now. In fact, it should be far more obvious today, density is green.

Generation IV nuclear will be the clear winner after we waste enough time and money on "Feel Good", so-called renewables. The reasons will be energy density, reliability, cost, safety, and the number of direct applications for the high industrial heat they produce. (electricity is only one of the hundreds of applications)

[finnjon]

I would have liked Mills to address the climate change argument. That is, should we not accept slightly higher prices (if necessary) as a way to prevent future costs from climate change?

The other disagreement seemed to be about the extent we should factor in future progress in our estimations. Ramez wanted to assume continued exponential improvements, while Mills barely wanted to consider any improvements at all. Of course all these laws come to an end at some point but at the same time there are a vast number of people working on the new technologies with deployments of liquid metal batteries and things like perovskite solar cells.

Something that was not discussed was carbon sequestration, which if cheap enough, would give fossil fuels a longer lifespan. Neither was geopolitics discussed, which could have effects either way. Europe would rather be free of dependence on Russia for natural gas, and that may motivate some of its decision-making.

[ThePrytanis]

Comment posted before listening to the debate: I hope they talk about nuclear or fusion. If you look at cost per kilowatt hour, nuclear is far more cost efficient than renewables, and it has no carbon emissions. Waste, yes, but we can deal with that. Especially if we r&d Thorium plants. Fusion is future tech, obviously.

If technological progress in renewables can bring costs below nuclear, and if technological progress can be made in storage, the market will just switch. But until that happens, we're stuck with current tech and costs.

Until technological progress is made in renewables, nuclear wins, hands down.