I am pleased for y'all that you are finding some peace of mind with your impression that the world can function OK with a supply of renewables which can reduce C emissions to a point where 'we will be saved' from the comeuppance arising from our rash transfer of fossilised carbon into the atmosphere.
But I am not convinced that this can be achieved at a useful scale.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/This post demonstrates the difficulty of enabling sufficient energy storage at national scales to see effective reductions in emissions. That is even ignoring the manufacturing effort required to build and maintain the physical lumps required to provide the storage capacity.
Doing some math on the Do the Math post shows that using all the known lead in the world a battery could be built which would provide USA only with about 3 hours storage, or the world with about 40 minutes storage. Using all the lead there is. And of course these batteries will have to be rebuilt every few years as - unlike wind and sunlight - batteries have a very finite life.
Sure, add all the other types of batteries, and I doubt that the picture looks any better.
World energy demand looks like it is continuing to rise at the moment, with renewables other than hydro producing about 7% of the total
Coal/Peat (40.8%)
Natural Gas (21.6%)
Hydro (16.4%)
Nuclear (10.6%)
Oil (4.3%)
Others (Renew.) (6.3%)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption To create any effective reduction in emissions will require us to eliminate at least half of the coal/peat/natural gas/oil component which totals 66.7 %. Lets say we need to eliminate 30%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energyThis article tells us that the poster-child renewables of wind and solar only supply about 2.2% of the total energy consumed. So to ramp up these systems to replace 30% of the total energy production will require solar and wind to increase by 15-fold if we are to even get GHG concentrations to level off.
An alternative reference..
https://solarthermalmagazine.com/2017/08/27/roadmap-100-renewable-energy/..indicates that as at 2015 PV and Wind were only 0.93% of total energy production, while the 2050 target in that paper is to get these up to 95% - an increase of 102 times present installed production. If 15-fold is impossible, what is 102-fold??
As info like the Do the Math post shows, this scale of production will hit hard resource limits quite quickly. OK - there will be 'replacement' as one resource limit is hit we will transfer to using another. But experience to date has shown that such alternatives are seldom cheaper or easier to use - or they would have been used first. So as we chew through the low hanging fruit it all gets much harder.
My concern is that we are on a hiding to nothing with this effort - that chasing installation of capacity for wind and solar and all the attendant systems needed to make it a viable fit for consumption will not be able to produce a useful reduction in emissions.
We cannot realistically envisage that we will achieve a 15-fold increase in wind and solar as it chases the current increasing energy demand as well. At a push, it would not be unrealistic to envisage a doubling, or maybe even double-doubling of installed RE capacity over the next decade or so; but not a 15-fold increase.
Sure push on with RE development, but just don't kid yourselves or the rest of us that doubling or double-doubling RE is going to make a useful difference.
It seems to me that our best bet is simply to focus on reducing energy consumption. Full stop. That should be the only place we expend any resources. We have to bring the demand curve down to the point where fossil fuel emissions leave our children with a viable future.
World energy use by sector:
Sector Use%
Industry 28%
Transport 27%
Residential and service 36%
Non-energy use 9%
This table shows where energy is used, and hence where savings must be made.
Can we do this without killing the global economy? We have to. Its either that or we will kill ourselves.
So there. My conclusion is that RE is nice, but even if we double-double RE it will not be enough and besides the creation of RE systems is likely to hit hard resource limits way before it becomes significantly helpful.
To reduce emissions to the point where a return to 250 ppm CO2 can resume, reduction in fossil fuel use by reducing demand across the board is the only viable way forward, and the only place where the limited economic, resource and human resources should be expended.
And dragging this back to the Oil and Gas issue - what this means is that we should ensure that every NegaWatt of demand destruction achieved is represented by a direct reduction in fossil fuel demand. This will be easiest achieved in demand catchments which have the highest proportion of fossil fuel energy use.
We can do this, but we have to make sure we are doing the things that will really matter. Reducing demand will have a far better payback than any additional RE. Oil and gas consumption (and coal) must decline.