The fifth great turnaround proposed by the Earth For All initiative of the Club of Rome is a complete restructuring of our energy system.
Today, by one estimate, every American has at their command the equivalent of roughly 150 “servants” working 24/7 every day of the year, and that does not seem to include the energy used outside America to make all the stuff that is acquired. Earth For All cites a 2018 study in Nature Energy by Arnulf Grubler and colleagues that found global energy demand by 2050 could be 40 per cent lower than now if all known energy efficiencies were implemented, in spite of population increases and rising affluence.
We also need to redesign our cities for walkability and livability, aiming for denser development, public transportation and “smaller vehicles, and fewer vehicles on the roads.” No, many sectors are not hard to electrify — the technologies to do so exist. No, it is not difficult to change people’s behaviour, and no, clean energy is not intermittent and unreliable, if proper planning is done.
Earth For All’s third proposed solution is an exponential growth in new renewables. Wind and solar, they point out, doubled from five per cent of all global electricity production in 2016 to 10 per cent in 2021.