The BBC released a podcast which aired Fri 18 Nov 2022.

The titular question was:

“Can a country live on renewable energy alone?”

As always the devil is in the details. If the question is asking about “any country” then, obviously yes. There are many countries which half low population density and benefit from large hydro reserves (Costa Rica) or geothermal reserves (Iceland).

However, this podcast gives the impression that it is possible for all countries.

I transcribed the podcast with OpenAI, whisper and I highlighted all the numbers with:

sed -r 's/\b(\<[0-9]+\>|half|third|quarter|fifth|sixth|seventh|eighth|ninth|hundreth|thousanth|zero|one|two|three|four|five|six|seven|eight|nine|ten|eleven|twelve|thirteen|fourteen|fifteen|sixteen|seventeen|eighteen|nineteen|twenty|thirty|forty|fifty|sixty|seventy|eighty|ninety|hundred|thousand|million|billion|trillion)/ __\1__ /gi' TheInquiry-20221117-CanACountryLiveOnRenewableEnergyAlone.txt > TheInquiry-20221117-CanACountryLiveOnRenewableEnergyAlone.md

Download the full transcript here

I have manually extracted all the numerical claims related directly to energy supply made during the entire podcast below. There were four experts, and it ran for a duration of 23 minutes.

Sarah Kurtz. Professor at the University of California:

Solar and wind energy make up a tenth of all of the electricity generated around the world.

We don’t need to have storage until we get up into the range of something like 15 to 25%.

Also, if we want to rely more on renewable energy, we need to build more capacity to produce it. Production capacity is currently forecast to increase by over 60% between 2020 and 2026 globally.

Halle Rundhur. Director General of Iceland’s National Energy Authority:

Today, nine out of ten houses in Iceland are heated with geothermal energy.

Actually, over 50 percent of newly registered cars are purely electric

Christian Breyer. Professor for solar economy at LUT University in Finland

In the summer in the Northern Hemisphere solar energy is really good during daytime the wind energy is excellent in the winter half year very often 24/ 7, and then we have to combine both resources and then of course with the renewable energy we need flexibility in the system flexibility in demand and storage.

80 percent of all batteries we need as a society we will need in vehicles typically rolling on the road so for cars for trucks for buses so there we will need most of the batteries, and they’re very valuable because they can indirectly balance the electricity generation we call that smart charging smart ev charging.

Tim Buckley. Director of climate energy finance in Sydney

Australia produces a third of its electricity from renewable sources it’s a country tailor-made for clean energy with more sunshine than any other continent and a long coastline ideal for offshore wind farms.

I’m predicting the electricity price the wholesale price of electricity is going to drop by upwards of 50 60 70 percent over the coming decade.

When you’re looking at 20 million batteries on wheels, that will play a huge function in terms of absorbing excess generation every day

Summing up

In the witness statements, there are details about a few individual countries. It does not review global energy consumption, it does not make efficiency assumptions, it does not look at electricity as a proportion of primary energy. It just talks to people with vested interests in maintaining the idea that a renewable energy revolution is possible, without probing them on details.

What is the point of this exercise if not propaganda?