Full Title: Energy After Fire: The Shift From Primitive Heat to Modern Work
Author(s): Daan Walter, Sam Butler-Sloss, and Kingsmill Bond
Publisher(s): Rocky Mountain Institute
Publication Date: September 10, 2024
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Our energy system is stuck in the past. Fire has been our primary source of energy for over a million years, providing the essential heat needed to survive. This reliance on fire made sense when our principal energy needs were purely for heat. However, today’s energy demands have evolved far beyond this primal necessity. Unlike in past millennia, we now require more work than heat: we desire mobility, motors, electrical appliances, and data processing in greater quantities than we do warmth. Despite this transformation over the past century from heat demand to work demand, our fundamental energy supply methods have not changed much, and are still mostly heat generation. This has led to incredible inefficiency, which they describe in a prior article.
We need energy sources fit for an era of work demand, not heat demand. Fortunately, thanks to the rapid growth and cost decline of solar, wind, and electrification, “firepower” faces inexorable decline.