“Solar and Wind can meet our energy demand 100 times over.” We see this and many variations of it repeated endlessly across media. There is some objection and debate related to the challenges posed by intermittency, mining of all the resources, disposing of the obsolete equipment, to name a few. The claim and the objections to it make for an interesting debate but they are both premised on a foundation full of errors.

To claim that any resource can meet 100% of our energy needs we have to start with an assumption that we know what those needs are, not just today, but also far into the future. Stopping to examine the underlying assumptions to most of these demand models quickly shows the gross over simplifications and primarily US and EU centric views that underpin the models.

To illustrate some of the most basic errors let’s start with the IEA’s Net Zero by 2050 report. This report notes that, “A transition of the scale and speed described by the net zero pathway cannot be achieved without sustained support and participation from citizens.” Well what kind of support is envisioned exactly? Is this just a Jimmy Carter sweater moment or are we talking about people massively adjusting their way of life? It seems like it is a little of both. For a flavor of what’s envisioned by this “support” the report summarizes behavioral changes, (Figure 1).

Some of these like cutting out steaming hot showers, limiting your A/C to 77 degrees or imposing speed limits of no more than 62 mph do indeed feel very much like the Carter Sweater speech kind of targets. These are mild prescriptions that many would not like, but they are hardly draconian. A few of the others like, “Use of ICE cars phased out in large cities by 2030,” are clearly complete fantasy.

I point these out not to make you chuckle in disdain or nod in agreement, but to highlight that these are very much limited to the developed world viewpoint. If you live in a fully developed economy you may agree or disagree with these ideas, but in either case, you understand them. If you are sitting in a home primarily made of scraps of plastic sheets, cardboard, tin, corrugated metal with dirt floors these behavior adjustments may as well have been written for Martians.

The scale and impact of these modeling misses can be summed up with a wonderful story, quote below, about the unintended consequences of cheaper solar power’s impact on demand in Pakistan. It seems that in a surprise to everyone the people in Pakistan would like more electricity than these ivory tower modelers would like to ascribe to them.

“The pattern is that Western energy forecasters are continually surprised by how much energy people in developing countries will consume. As countries like Pakistan grow wealthier, their people are going to demand the same energy-dependent conveniences that people in wealthy countries already do — and our energy forecasts must reflect that reality or we’re going to keep getting it wrong.”

The IEA report assumes that hundreds of millions of Pakistani’s would be just fine surviving with enough electricity to power a ceiling fan. In a place where summer heat waves can top 120 degrees I am pretty certain that AC is going to be in high demand. They may possibly be willing to accept a 77 degree cap on that AC, but they are not going to sweat it out under the fan so that we can hit a 1.5 degree limit, not happening.

The evidence for this is clear in the success that solar power is having in Pakistan with 16 gigawatts of capacity installed in 2024 alone. “Over the past few years the country has become the globe’s third largest importer of Chinese solar panels, and yet none of the resulting projects are operated by, or even visible to, the national utility.”

We see broad consensus on the amazing amount of demand growth in China, (Figure 2). Why would we assume that other urbanizing and industrializing countries would be any different? They won’t be. They may not achieve the workshop of the world status that China has so industrial demand may be less, but the whirr of electric motors from the AC unit to the refrigerator is sure to be consistent.

We could add into this mix the nascent demand from AI that is layering on a whole new sector of demand that isn’t in any of these models that pre-date mid 2024, which is virtually all of them. Most every demand model from the IEA to EIA assumes modest power demand growth from major developed economies. With the advent of AI demand that is just getting started and the likely reindustrialization of the US economy, these errors also look to be quite large.

The biggest fallacy of these forecasts is not in their expected mix of renewables, fossil fuels, nuclear or some other yet to be developed new technology, it is in the gigantic blind spot they exhibit when in comes to human behavior. Those that don’t enjoy the full benefits of a developed economy lifestyle certainly want those benefits and won’t forego them to help save the planet from global warming.

Those that do enjoy all those benefits aren’t all just lazing around the cool AC. They are working, dreaming, and inventing the future. A future that runs on ever more power. So no matter how much power some university professor or government bureaucrat modeler decides we “need” we will always want more. When energy prices decline do we pocket the savings? No. We use more. Not to meet some arbitrary definition of what we need, but because we want it.