Given that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, the key to stopping climate change, pretty obviously, is to stop burning them – for generating electricity, heating and cooling homes, moving around, making steel, cooking dinners, and in as many other applications as we can.
We need to do all these things with a different form of energy. We also need ways to carry that energy from place to place and to store it, because – like fossil fuels – it will not always be produced where and when it is needed. There are various options in theory, but in practice only one, electricity, can do all the various jobs we need efficiently, conveniently and economically. And it is time that I spelled out what the five key elements of the future clean energy system are.
The first is renewable generation, with wind turbines and solar panels providing the vast majority. (These are obviously two distinct technologies, but their impact and their growth are so similar that for most purposes they can be treated as one.) In principle other fossil-free forms of generation could play the dominant role, but they will not, for reasons that will soon become clear.
The second element is electricity storage. The traditional form uses water. When electricity is abundant and therefore cheap, pumps push water uphill from a lower reservoir to a higher one. When electricity demand rises, the water flows downhill through a turbine and generates electricity. This approach, pumped hydro, will continue to be necessary and ma
