University of Tasmania
Browse
123825 - Silver buckshot or bullet.pdf (266.24 kB)

Silver buckshot or bullet: is a future 'energy mix' necessary?

Download (266.24 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-19, 15:17 authored by Barry BrookBarry Brook, Blees, T, Wigley, TML, Hong, S
To displace fossil fuels and achieve the global greenhouse-gas emissions reductions required to meet the Paris Agreement on climate change, the prevalent argument is that a mix of different low-carbon energy sources will need to be deployed. Here we seek to challenge that viewpoint. We argue that a completely decarbonized, energy-rich and sustainable future could be achieved with a dominant deployment of next-generation nuclear fission and associated technologies for synthesizing liquid fuels and recycling waste. By contrast, non-dispatchable energy sources like wind and solar energy are arguably superfluous, other than for niche applications, and run the risk of diverting resources away from viable and holistic solutions. For instance, the pairing of variable renewables with natural-gas backup fails to address many of the entrenched problems we seek to solve. Our conclusion is that, given the urgent time frame and massive extent of the energy-replacement challenge, half-measures that distract from or stymie effective policy and infrastructure investment should be avoided.

History

Publication title

Sustainability

Volume

10

Article number

302

Number

302

Pagination

1-14

ISSN

1937-0695

Department/School

School of Natural Sciences

Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert Inc Publ

Place of publication

United States

Rights statement

© 2018 by the authors. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Nuclear energy

Usage metrics

    University Of Tasmania

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC